Preview
  • The Good-Enough Life

  • By: Avram Alpert
  • Narrated by: William Hope
  • Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
  • 3.7 out of 5 stars (27 ratings)

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The Good-Enough Life

By: Avram Alpert
Narrated by: William Hope
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Publisher's summary

This audiobook narrated by William Hope explains how an acceptance of our limitations can lead to a more fulfilling life and a more harmonious society

We live in a world oriented toward greatness, one in which we feel compelled to be among the wealthiest, most powerful, and most famous. This book explains why no one truly benefits from this competitive social order, and reveals how another way of life is possible—a good-enough life for all.

Avram Alpert shows how our obsession with greatness results in stress and anxiety, damage to our relationships, widespread political and economic inequality, and destruction of the natural world. He describes how to move beyond greatness to create a society in which everyone flourishes. By competing less with each other, each of us can find renewed meaning and purpose, have our material and emotional needs met, and begin to lead more leisurely lives. Alpert makes no false utopian promises, however. Life can never be more than good enough because there will always be accidents and tragedies beyond our control, which is why we must stop dividing the world into winners and losers and ensure that there is a fair share of decency and sufficiency to go around.

Visionary and provocative, The Good-Enough Life demonstrates how we can work together to cultivate a good-enough life for all instead of tearing ourselves apart in a race to the top of the social pyramid.

©2022 Avram Alpert (P)2022 Princeton University Press
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Critic reviews

“In this delightfully inspiring book, Avram Alpert draws on virtue ethics, Buddhism, and African American philosophy to encourage us to let go of the cult of greatness. An attitude of ‘good-enoughness’ has the power to replace anxiety and burnout with more meaningful, ethical, and pleasant lives. This is the guide we all need to become good enough.” - Skye C. Cleary, author of How to Be Authentic

The Good-Enough Life is a great book. In a style that feels like a conversation among friends, Alpert makes a convincing case that it is our deep, often unspoken commitment to ‘greatness’ that stands in the way of improving the quality of our political, social, and economic lives. Learning to seek ‘good enough’ may be the key to social transformation.” - Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

“In this eclectic and enjoyable tour of ethics, politics, and aesthetics, Avram Alpert bridges philosophy and self-help to envision something that seems to be slipping from our grasp: a livable world. He shows how an inhabitable planet and an equal society depend on cultivating egalitarian virtues and pursuing the modest satisfactions of what is good enough.” - Gabriel Winant, author of The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America

What listeners say about The Good-Enough Life

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Not what I was expecting

Honestly, this is a book to spark a grassroots movement. I can’t control other people look and I was looking for more individual based content. But I was able to get some of that from the book. Not bad, but not great. Good enough?

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I was super disappointed

This book was boring, slow, had no new interesting ideas, repeated itself, and was more about bashing excellence then actually addressing finding happiness in the good.

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Very boring

I got very lost with all of the quotes. I seriously didn’t know what he was trying to say half the time. This book seemed more like a list and not a book.

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