Note: I received access to read this book from the publisher for free. That doesn't influence my opinion on it, but it's worth disclosing:

It's a comedic beginners guide to ethics! If you've seen The Good Place and you are hoping to understand how that points system could work, this is a good book for you. Shur reduces philosophers writing down to very digestible chunks with plenty of good hypotheticals to help the knowledge sink in.

This is such an awesome book! It really challenges you to re-think your perspective and let go of alllll the expectations & stress we constantly put on ourselves.

If you liked the TV show "The Good Place," you will probably like "How to Be Perfect," written by its showrunner Michael Schur. The same philosophical quandaries that the show explored--the trolley problem, for example--are here, but "How to Be Perfect"'s longer length gives Schur the opportunity to delve deeper into other thorny ethical issues such as whether or not we can admire the art of terrible people. It's a lighthearted how-to book for ethical behavior in every conceivable situation, underpinned by philosophical concepts and truths but never weighed down by them. A fun book to dip in and out of.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review.

I definitely picked this book because of the authors associated with The Office, The Good Place and Parks and Recreation which are some of my all time favorite tv shows.

Book Plot: "Most people think of themselves as “good,” but it’s not always easy to determine what’s “good” or “bad”—especially in a world filled with complicated choices and pitfalls and booby traps and bad advice. Fortunately, many smart philosophers have been pondering this conundrum for millennia and they have guidance for us. With bright wit and deep insight, How to Be Perfect explains concepts like deontology, utilitarianism, existentialism, ubuntu, and more so we can sound cool at parties and become better people.

Schur starts off with easy ethical questions like “Should I punch my friend in the face for no reason?” (No.) and works his way up to the most complex moral issues we all face. Such as: Can I still enjoy great art if it was created by terrible people? How much money should I give to charity? Why bother being good at all when there are no consequences for being bad? And much more. By the time the book is done, we’ll know exactly how to act in every conceivable situation, so as to produce a verifiably maximal amount of moral good. We will be perfect, and all our friends will be jealous. OK, not quite. Instead, we’ll gain fresh, funny, inspiring wisdom on the toughest issues we face every day." - NetGalley

It is comical to say that I truly enjoyed this book only because it is technically about such a dense topic as philosophy. I took a few philosophy classes during undergraduate and I took them because somehow I hear they were easy A's. They did end up being fairly easy, I was simply confused the whole time I was in class and could not tell you what was talked about it in them. With that being said, this book is a perfect balance of philosophy and comedy and makes pondering the questions about good or evil truly effortless.

Being a fan of The Good Place I enjoyed the references throughout the book. Just as in the show, Michael Schur makes the impossible possible by having people who wouldn't think twice about picking up a book about philosophy, pick one up and truly enjoy it. If you are having any hesitations to reading this book, DONT. it is truly amazing.= and watch The Good Place while your at it!

This was simply FANTASTIC! I loved it, my wife loved it, and I think that anyone who’s about thinking about thinking will love it. Please read this book, and you’ll thank me.

Michael Schur is a successful television writer and director who is responsible, in whole or in part, from some of the funniest TV shows of the last 15 years. His most recent, “The Good Place,” was a triumph of infusing moral philosophy into an entertaining show. But will his sense of humor work on the printed page (or ebook page) as well as the screen? The answer to that question will vary from person to person. For myself, the answer is no, but it doesn’t matter. The book is still interesting even if the jokes aren’t as funny as they are when Kristen Bell or William Jackson Harper delivers them. Schur summarizes the key tenets of important philosophers using contemporary examples of ethical dilemmas. Just as in “The Good Place,” he presents complex ideas in an engaging and easy to understand fashion. There are footnotes and citations, but it’s not written like a scholarly volume, assuming familiarity with academic philosophy. Overall, it’s an interesting reading, even if it’s not as satisfying as a fifth season of “The Good Place.” I thank NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the complimentary review copy of this book.

Most people think of themselves as “good,” but it’s not always easy to determine what’s “good” or “bad”—especially in a world filled with complicated choices and pitfalls and booby traps and bad advice. Fortunately, many smart philosophers have been pondering this conundrum for millennia and they have guidance for us. With bright wit and deep insight, How to Be Perfect explains concepts like deontology, utilitarianism, existentialism, ubuntu, and more so we can sound cool at parties and become better people.

Schur starts off with easy ethical questions like “Should I punch my friend in the face for no reason?” (No.) and works his way up to the most complex moral issues we all face. Such as: Can I still enjoy great art if it was created by terrible people? How much money should I give to charity? Why bother being good at all when there are no consequences for being bad? And much more. By the time the book is done, we’ll know exactly how to act in every conceivable situation, so as to produce a verifiably maximal amount of moral good. We will be perfect, and all our friends will be jealous. OK, not quite. Instead, we’ll gain fresh, funny, inspiring wisdom on the toughest issues we face every day.

I absolutely love The Good Place and how Michael Schur was able to introduce philosophy and ethics into a comedy show and make it both educational and hilarious at the same time. A lot of principles that are mentioned in the series have still stuck with me because they were introduced and explained in such a fun and memorable way. How to be Perfect didn't land for me because it felt a bit more textbook like rather than entertaining and educational. I think if you go into this expecting the information to be delivered in a "Good Place" fashion, you might be disappointed, however it is a solid book on philosophy and history.

If you’ve ever seen “Parks and Recreation”, you know it’s hilarious. So it’s no wonder that this book was not only uplifting,, but uproariously funny. It asks some great questions, a lot of stuff to make you think, and a lot to make you laugh. Amazing book!

A few months ago, in a late-night conversation with some friends, we had gotten to talk about what makes a good person, and no joke, had talked about how a lot of philosophy felt hard to learn, and I had mentioned that I wanted to learn more in a way that addressed the quandries of real life, like one of my favorite shows, The Good Place. So reading this book felt like incredible good luck.

Schur takes us through 3 main Western schools of thought as an introduction, and then proceeds to show us how these schools of thought might apply to real life moral dilemmas. He then introduces us to other schools of thought when the rules and conclusions drawn from the ones we've been introduced to before don't "feel" good enough to the dilemmas we're facing. These were some of my favorite chapters of the book, because to me, philosophy always felt to be a bit too abstract to apply to the difficulties of life. I especially enjoyed the chapter about whether it was alright to enjoy the art created by someone who is a terrible person.

I also liked reading about luck in this book, especially both as it relates to circumstances you're born with and the serendipity that occurs in ways that we don't necessarily see, especially since our society likes to extoll that it's a meritocracy. I myself have dealt with people who are in denial about luck when it comes to their successes, so reading about how it relates to trying to be a good person was gratifying.

I really, really enjoyed reading this book - it was funny and engaging while also teaching me a lot about moral philosophy. I'm sure I'll be back for rereads and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about philosophy.

A thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the ARC.

I adore Mike Schur, who created my favorite TV series, "Parks and Recreation." This is a fascinating book, although it turned out I wasn't quite as interested in a college-level course in ethics as I hoped.

This was a clever and humorous way to present philosophical theories and delve into questions of morality. It is accessible for the every day person with the wit that we have come to appreciate from Michael Schur. I felt like it was a bit focused on white western perspectives. it was also a little longer than it needed to be for the topics covered. I'm not sure if it was just the advance copy ebook format, but the very long footnotes felt extraneous and not cohesive with what they were referencing.

overall I would recommend it. We can all use a bit of refreshing of our moral compass. As a pastor, I found myself sharing some of these ideas while I was reading the book. At the very least we should be considering the ethical responsibilities we each carry.

I usually don't think of moral philosophy as particularly entertaining, and certainly not funny, but Schur's book on that topic provides consistent laughs. It's not a joke, though -- he's committed to sorting through the main currents of ethical thought to figure out how to be not perfect, but at least better. Along the way, he covers the major philosophers and the biggest threads of western (and some non-western thought).

Fans of The Good Place will especially like this one, but by no means is watching the show a prerequisite. It might be a post-requisite, though. His takedown of Kant throughout the book sheds new light on his series (and is a useful guide to Kant in the process).

As intro to moral philosophy, this book would be pretty hard to beat.

I expected to love this book and I absolutely did. After watching The Good Place and listening to the accompanying podcast I learned that Schur and the other writers learned a great deal about the philosophical concepts highlighted in the show.
In How to be Perfect, Schur takes those concepts and uses them to answer a variety of questions that apply to everyday life, and it's just as clever and irreverent as you would think. The tone is very conversational, and there are a lot of parenthetical asides that give the reader the impression that they're getting sage advice from a trusted friend.
There are parts in the latter half of the, because of the frequent asides, could have been edited a little more critically, but otherwise it's funny and incredibly accessible, and I've already recommended it to several of my friends and family.

A book about ethics from Michael Schur from the TV show The Good Place, yes please! Loved this book. Michael writes very conversationally as he walks you through numerous ethical situations, starting with should I punch my best friend in the face for no reason. This is the most fun I’ve had learning ethics.

I loved this book! It took me a while to get through it (normal for me for non-fiction) but I enjoyed every minute. I’ve always been intrigued by philosophy and that was one of the reasons that I loved the TV show The Good Place. This book is an awesome intro to philosophy from a modern perspective with Mike Schur’s funny-as-hell voice. Don’t pick it up just because you’re a fan of The Office if you’re not also someone who likes to wrestle mentally with thorny questions (there’s an Office joke in there about wrestling cousin Mose, but there’s a reason I’m not a clever TV writer).

Michael Schur wrote a perfect book - and of course he did, since he's clearly the expert on perfection. The book is written in jest, but actually provides a great deal of opportunity for reflection, clarifying the prism through which one views the world and their life choices - from the mundane to the ethical. I'll buy this one for friends.

I loved every minute of this book! I have never liked philosophy.. it’s one of those things where someone will start talking about it and my eyes will glaze over and I stop listening. This book applied moral philosophy to real world scenarios and how to be “better people”. It was also hilarious. I found myself laughing outloud every couple of pages. I liked the Good Place, but you certainly don’t have to have seen it or liked it to enjoy this book!

I'm sorry to say I couldn't finish this book. I requested it because I really enjoy the TV shows that Michael Shur has written. I was expecting a lot more humor. I'm really not a big fan of Philosophy and although I can enjoy a little Ethics discussion, reading about the different concepts in philosophy over the ages felt more like a text book and I was supposed to remember all the different ones. I just wanted to have a good laugh, I wish there was more of that in the book.

Love this book. A great and funny introduction to philosophy with real world application. Really made me think about how I'm living my life.