A reissue of a classic text, Norms and Nobility is a provocative reappraisal of classical education that offers a workable program for contemporary school reform. David Hicks contends that the classical tradition promotes a spirit of inquiry that is concerned with the development of style and conscience, which makes it an effective and meaningful form of education. Dismissing notions that classical education is elitist and irrelevant, Hicks argues that the classical tradition can meet the needs of our increasingly technological society as well as serve as a feasible model for mass education.

David V. Hicks graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton and read Philosophy at Oxford. He taught strategy at the Naval War College while serving in the Navy and spent most of his life heading independent schools and serving on school, foundation, and seminary boards in America and abroad. He wrote his first book, winner of an ALA Award in Education, Norms & Nobility, while still in his twenties. Since then, he and his brother Scot, an international school head, have collaborated on a number of translations: The Emperor's Handbook (Marcus Aurelius' Meditations) published by Scribner, and an annotated series of Plutarch's Lives, The Lawgivers, The Statesmen, and The Tyrant, published by CiRCE. Classical Academic Press will publish his new book, The Stones Cry Out!, in 2024. He and his wife Mary Elizabeth have four grown children and live on a ranch near Harrison, Montana.