Remarkable. . . . Moskos manages to capture a world that most people know only through the distorting prism of television and film, where police officers are usually portrayed as quixotically heroic or contemptibly corrupt.

Police thrillers are so widely read and police dramas so commonplace on television that many people think they have a good understanding of what a cop's world is like. But in truth that world is seldom revealed with anything approaching verisimilitude. We get it with The Wagon.

Having been created in the image and likeness of God, unlike trees or flowers or fire or the moon, we are most fully human when we love, forgive and work toward peace. To be violent, vengeful or selfish is to be un-human!