Imagine if your parents had raised you to never lie, if they’d ingrained in you a compulsion to never, under any circumstances, withhold the truth or fail to speak your mind. To Be Honest is Michael Leviton’s extraordinary account of being raised in a family he calls a “little honesty cult.” For young Michael, his parents’ core philosophy felt liberating. He loved “just being honest.” By the time he was twenty-nine years old, Michael had told only three “lies” in his entire life. But this honesty had consequences—in friendships, on dates, and at job interviews. And when honesty slowly poisoned a great romance, Michael decided there had to be something to lying after all. To Be Honest is a tender and darkly comic memoir about what it means and how it feels to tell more than the truth.