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Rating: 
Summary: Highly Recommended!
Review: Arthur Dobrin takes a novel approach to the study of ethics: Instead of crafting complex ethical systems, he encourages his readers to figure out their own standards. He does this by sketching the broad outlines of Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the ethical thinking of the world's great philosophers. After laying this basic groundwork, he proceeds to present readers with a series of scenarios in which they are asked to decide what they would do. Dobrin hopes that readers will discover patterns in their responses that will reveal their own ethical systems. We from getAbstract highly recommend this enlightening book.
Rating:
Summary: A decent introduction to the topic of decency.
Review: I thought from the topics covered, and the approach to the topic, that this book had significant potential. However, it was so poorly executed, I stopped reading without even getting halfway through.Much of the discussion that takes place in the so-called "case studies" include opinions of people who are writers, journalists, psychologists, etc, who have made no special study of ethics or morality. If I want the opinions of average people, I can talk to my friends. I was hoping this book would have some insight, and to a certain extent, this is provided in the first section. But beyond that, this book is of little use. I will need to look elsewhere for a good book on this topic.
Rating: 
Summary: This Book Is A Disappointment
Review: I thought from the topics covered, and the approach to the topic, that this book had significant potential. However, it was so poorly executed, I stopped reading without even getting halfway through. Much of the discussion that takes place in the so-called "case studies" include opinions of people who are writers, journalists, psychologists, etc, who have made no special study of ethics or morality. If I want the opinions of average people, I can talk to my friends. I was hoping this book would have some insight, and to a certain extent, this is provided in the first section. But beyond that, this book is of little use. I will need to look elsewhere for a good book on this topic.
Rating:
Summary: A decent introduction to the topic of decency.
Review: If you aren't making reasonable ethical judgments, you probably aren't contributing as much as you can to yourself or to others, and your life is more chaotic than it needs to be. Arthur Dobrin has written a fine non-technical workbook for this frequently confusing topic.
The author first discusses the benefits of ethics and outlines three basic approaches to ethical issues, with a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. Using this good foundation, the author gives a brief ethical "quiz," to help you orient your own thinking, and then provides over 20 case studies for the reader to think about. The author explores each study and shares some thoughts provided by a diverse panel of people who have worked with ethical concerns in their own professions.
I thought the case studies were generally high quality, interesting, fun, and reasonably challenging. I found myself, and the panel, struggling with occasionally incompatible and irreconcilable issues involving love versus fairness, integrity versus loyalty, consensus versus obligation, and so forth. Examples include a family's search to best love three very diverse and deserving children, and one case where an elderly husband must decide whether to pursue a risky surgery for his spouse who has Alzheimer's.
In my opinion, the author has given us a decent foundation to improve consistency in thinking about, and resolving, ethical problems. This isn't rocket science -- there are often no completely verifiable or ideal solutions, and it's still an "amateur activity," with most choices being made by non-professionals. After reading the book I still find I have uncertainty in my ethical choices, but I have notably less guilt and confusion. This isn't the last word on ethics but it's a good first word.
Some drawbacks of the book include the scanty bibliography or suggestions for further insight, the lack of discussion on how compliance with advice should affect the allocation of scarce resources, and the lack of discussion on how various factors such as emotions, experience, etc might affect our ethical choosing. A brief discussion of modern ethical trends, such as humanism versus non-humanism would have been nice, but would have made the book more longer and mroe technical.
It would make an EXCELLENT CHOICE FOR A BOOK CLUB OR FOR BRINGING OUT CONVERSATION with family and friends, since the cases are most interesting when other peoples' views are solicited, and discussion seems to enhance the subject matter.
Rating: 
Summary: ethics 101
Review: This was a good book on a subject that is tough for me...
I have read this book twice, the first time on my own the second as part of an online class... I was somewhat interested in ethics the first time I read the book and therefore did not finish the book. Again, ethics is a little tough for me. The second time I read this book, I was interested, applied myself, did some self-reflection and got quite a bit out of this book. It was excellent...
My take home message is this: If you are interested in ethics and will apply yourself this book is well worth your money. I got more out of this book than I did out of all of my graduate and undergraduate classes. If you are not interested in ethics... well if you are not interested in ethics, why are you even looking at this book in the first place????
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