'This exceptional book deserves to replace W.F.R. Hardie's Aristotle's Ethical Theory (1968) as the standard one-volume companion to Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics (EN). ... Few will agree with this detailed reading at every point, but it repays careful consideration. Glossary of transliterated Greek terms. Interesting quasi-ethnographic appendix, "Aristotle's World," which is not about fourth-century Athens but about the world of Aristotle's theoretical construction. Highly recommended.'- D.R.C. Reed (Choice) 'Sparshott succeeds in making us confront the Ethics as a whole, and his attempt to make sense of the work as we have it is refreshing in an age when scholars are often more interested in the provenance of the text than its substance.'- David Foster (Books in Canada) 'Sparshott's refusal to deal with Aristotle in terms of standard scholarly problems is matched by his refusal (or inability) to write academic prose. What he gives us instead is sharp, chatty, sly, at times rambling, occasionally downright perverse... Readers will also find the book to be sensibly organized; that the author is generally cultivated in classics and philosophy; and that he makes his way by taking Aristotle and Aristotle's unspoiled readers extremely seriously, though in neither case at arm's length.'- Sarah Broadie (Phoenix)