JOE: Good morning Calliope.
CALLIOPE: Good morning Joe. How are you today?
JOE: Good. I have something special to share with you, a review I wrote about Richard Bayer's The Good Person Guidebook (NY, Five O'Clock Club Books, 2008.)
CALLIOPE: I'm all ears.
JOE: Inspirational books often tend to wander, appealing to the imagination more than to the logical mind. Not so with Richard Bayer's The Good Person's Guidebook. On the first page he makes it clear that the good person is "a person of moral excellence, but not in vacuum." Being good does not mean standing on a pedestal for passersby to admire. It means acting morally and responsibly in interactions with others.
The author describes his writing as inspired by religious principles and applicable to the business world. People not driven by religious beliefs or immersed in business will still find this book applicable to their daily lives.
Rather than simply musing about being good, Beyer presents an organized and well reasoned approach. His book is divided into three sections consisting of ways to consider living ethically, deciding what kind person to be and how to implement ethical choices in daily life.
His Seven Stories exercise helps make sense of your life so far. His Fifteen Year and Forty Year Visions offer a framework for charting your future.
I have found that readers looking for inspiration often do not want to sift through page after page of reflections in search of suggestions on ways to handle a particular life difficulty. They like brief concise treatments. Bayer provides these along with frequent suggestions for practical applications. His comprehensive table of contents and index make it easy for the reader to find a particular topic of interest.
In these days of reckless self indulgence, The Good Person Guidebook stands as a compass for readers looking to reorient their lives and live in a meaningful way.
CALLIOPE: Thanks for sharing your review. I'll look for the book.
JOE: Talk with your tomorrow.
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