The Good Person Guidebook: Transforming Your Personal Life [Paperback]

Richard Bayer (Author), Kate Wendleton (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2008

The focus of The Good Person Guidebook is to help you discover the answers to two key questions: "What type of person should you be?" and "What should you do given a decision of ethical importance?" Richard Bayer provides important advice on a multitude of topics including what makes a person happy, how to overcome suffering, love in your personal life, raising children well, a meaningful work life, and respecting human dignity.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dr. Richard Bayer has appeared on the TODAY Show, CNN, Good Day New York, and in Fortune magazine, the Wall Street Journal and other major media. Dr. Bayer has a background of 22 years of teaching at the University level in economics and ethics. He has authored a book and 18 articles on labor economics.

Product Details

• Paperback: 294 pages
• Publisher: Five O' Clock Books (June 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0944054161
• ISBN-13: 978-0944054161
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,625,207 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Being a good person in a self indulgent society, October 27, 2008

By 

Joseph G. Langen "Joe Langen" (Leroy) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Good Person Guidebook: Transforming Your Personal Life (Paperback)

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.

Joseph G. Langen, Author of Commonsense Wisdom for Everyday Life.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Good Person Guidebook, October 25, 2008

By 

Bobbi Rightmyer "brightmyer249" (Harrodsburg, KY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Good Person Guidebook: Transforming Your Personal Life (Paperback)

When I received this book to review, I wasn't one hundred percent sure I was going to enjoy it. Typically "self-help" books are long on personal stories and short on advice. But The Good Person Guidebook was not what I was expecting; it was much more.

This book is divided into three main sections:
--A Perspective on Ethics
--Virtue: What type of person should I be
--Guidelines: what must we do

I learned how to make ethical decisions, respect human dignity and how to make long-standing goals. It clarifies good business practices versus bad business practices and helps to steer you in the direction of making the right business decisions.

Each new chapter begins with a famous quote, and because I love to collect quotes, this endeared me to the author. Also, at the end of each chapter you will find questions to consider and questions for group discussions. These are helpful if the book is being used in a business training session. I also enjoyed reading The Golden Rules from many different religions.

If you enjoy reading and learning about ethics and morality, especially with how they relate to business, then this is the book for you. Slightly larger than a trade paperback, it is easy to carry with you and read on the go.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just a regular guy with realistic results, November 10, 2009

By 

B. Miller (Omaha, NE) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Good Person Guidebook: Transforming Your Personal Life (Paperback)

First off I'd just like to thank Richard Bayer for writing this, it doesn't necessarily take a genius to understand these principles which most are embedded within us from birth...but hey I had to read the book to really get it sooo...

I'm not gonna bore you with some insightful review or anything just give you my experience.

I'm a 24 year old regular guy whom had a pretty mundane "going nowhere" kind of life. I've read other books but never finished them from authors like Dr. Laura or some other psychological guru. But Richard really puts it point blank right in your face, factually which I liked. The chapters were quick and easy to comprehend.

Before reading the book I had a 9-5 office job (which I'm just about to leave for something that really drives me), was hanging out the same old bars with the same old friends doing the same old thing day after day & weekend after weekend. Their didn't seem to be any sort of enjoyment or purpose in life. I couldn't maintain relationships, I had no hobbies, and my moral system was didn't make me feel like I had any worth.

Throughout reading this book I discovered I was starting to take on some of the positive moralistic principles not by a total conscious decision, most of the time they just started coming naturally.

So since finishing reading it which has been about 6 months ago I have an incredible life that is balanced in family, friends, hobbies, work, spiritual and emotional aspects. I feel for the first time in my life like I am doing what I always should be and love it!

I would recommend this book to anyone that just feels kind of lost or down in the dumps or even someone that feels like they don't get the respect they want or are always finding themselves stuck in a bad situation.