Strangers Drowning: Voyages to the Brink of Moral Extremity

Description

Renowned New Yorker journalist Larissa MacFarquhar's acclaimed account of the individuals who devote themselves to the lives of strangers There are those of us who help and those who live to help. In Strangers Drowning, celebrated journalist Larissa MacFarquhar digs deep into the psychological roots and existential dilemmas motivating those rare individuals practising lives of extreme ethical commitment. The donor who offers up her kidney to a complete stranger; the activist who abandons possessions to devote himself to the cause; the foster parent who adopts dozens of children- such do-gooders inspire us but also force us to question deep-seated notions about what it means to be human. How could these do-gooders value strangers as much as their own loved ones? What does it really take to live a life of extreme virtue? Might it mean making choices as heartbreaking as the one in the old philosophy problem- abandoning a single family member to drown so that two strangers might live?

Larissa MacFarquhar has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998. Her subjects have included John Ashbery, Barack Obama and Noam Chomsky, among many others. Before joining the magazine, she was a senior editor at Lingua Franca and an advisory editor at The Paris Review. She lives in New York.

Daringly conceived, brilliantly executed - may change not just how you see the world, but how you live in it -- Katherine Boo, author of Behind the Beautiful Forevers Chilling and utterly absorbing... Combining critical analysis with compassion, the book's treatment is reminiscent of Oliver Sacks, who explored the more extraordinary aspects of ordinary lives -- Frances Wilson * Daily Telegraph * Strangers Drowning is a book written in a deceptively simple and clear voice about people, about how morality lodges itself in a person not as an abstract idea, or even a value, but as a direction for life... Impressive * Financial Times * A brilliant and rigorous thinker... As a book on altruism, this is also a book that invites us to think about selfishness - she's good on Adam Smith and Darwin, among many others * Evening Standard *