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Bill Moyers conducts one of his illuminating interviews with the late historian Barbara Tuchman in this Films for the Humanities production. Heroes throughout history have typically exhibited qualities such as great courage, brilliant leadership, or an overarching sense of self-sacrifice to a larger goal. Contemporary polling of high school students reveals a disturbing shift in the concept of the hero, as the leading heroes of the late 20th century are sports figures and movie stars, whose personal behavior is often quite dubious in nature. Tuchman expounds on her belief that this shift is due to the fact that Americans have lost their ability to distinguish between right and wrong, leading to a fundamental confusion about what it means to be honorable.