Being a hobby philosopher, I absolutely loved The Good Place, and eagerly reserved this book at the library when I heard it existed. But, when I got the hardcopy, I flipped through the first few pages, took a look at the table of contents, and decided I wanted the audio instead. And I’m sure glad I waited!

How to Be Perfect is the culmination of all the research into moral philosophy that Shur did when writing the good place. And, over four season which reference dozens of philosophers and philosophical theories, its a lot. And in this book, they are so well summarized for the average person.

An issue I’ve had with books which summarize moral philosophy ideas is that they often are just lists of philosophers without any real connection between them. What I really loved about this book is that it is constructive. Each chapter, and each section within each chapter all build upon each other. So, the first chapter, on the easiest moral problem of whether it is morally right to punch your friend in the face for no reason, sets the foundation with the easy-to-understand Aristotlean Virtue Ethics, which is still referenced in the later chapters with much less clear-cut moral questions. 

He does talk about how most of moral philosophy is white, and old, and racist, and other problematic elements of the theories and people behind them, and I appreciated that. Ultimately, he says he wants the reader to have an arsenal of moral theories to help them solve complex moral problems. Through the book, he’ll take a little bit of this theory, and a little bit of that theory, and skip over another -- to show how we might use many theories to check and balance each other into a best solution, and I loved that. 

And, of course, it was funny! He brings his wit and comedy into these discussions, and the audiobook brought in the cast of the Good Place. This was a super enjoyable listen and I think anybody would find it entertaining and informative.