An intelligent person's guide to ethics Book

One of an odd pairing of books my daughter picked off a remainder table somewhere--the other was on infidelity!!! I got more out the beginning of this book, where the author discussed some hypothetical cases, than the rest. On the whole, though, I was disappointed. I think I was expecting a discussion of what kind of ethical considerations one needed to bring to life--so to speak, what the hard choices were and how one goes about making them. Instead, the author spends page after page discussing what words like "right" mean, and page after page arguing philosophical theories and trying to prove or disprove them. Why waste time discussing determinism in a book like this? It doesn't really matter if it is true: in order to live well, one must act as though it isn't. Furthermore, the author's own biases come through clearly, yet she never really discusses her reasoning, leaving one with the nasty feeling that if you disagree with her, she'd say you were clearly in the wrong. On the whole, this book is really about the theory of what "ethics" means, rather than a guide to ethics as the title proclaims.