Strangers Drowning High quality books
Strangers Drowning
By:Larissa MacFarquhar
Published on 2015-09-29 by Penguin
What does it mean to devote yourself wholly to helping others? In Strangers Drowning, Larissa MacFarquhar seeks out people living lives of extreme ethical commitment and tells their deeply intimate stories; their stubborn integrity and their compromises; their bravery and their recklessness; their joys and defeats and wrenching dilemmas. A couple adopts two children in distress. But then they think: If they can change two lives, why not four? Or ten? They adopt twenty. But how do they weigh the needs of unknown children in distress against the needs of the children they already have? Another couple founds a leprosy colony in the wilderness in India, living in huts with no walls, knowing that their two small children may contract leprosy or be eaten by panthers. The children survive. But what if they hadn’t? How would their parents’ risk have been judged? A woman believes that if she spends money on herself, rather than donate it to buy life-saving medicine, then she’s responsible for the deaths that result. She lives on a fraction of her income, but wonders: when is compromise self-indulgence and when is it essential? We honor such generosity and high ideals; but when we call people do-gooders there is skepticism in it, even hostility. Why do moral people make us uneasy? Between her stories, MacFarquhar threads a lively history of the literature, philosophy, social science, and self-help that have contributed to a deep suspicion of do-gooders in Western culture. Through its sympathetic and beautifully vivid storytelling, Strangers Drowning confronts us with fundamental questions about what it means to be human. In a world of strangers drowning in need, how much should we help, and how much can we help? Is it right to care for strangers even at the expense of those we are closest to? Moving and provocative, Strangers Drowning challenges us to think about what we value most, and why. From the Hardcover edition.
This Book was ranked at 29 by Google Books for keyword Leprosy colony money.
Book ID of Strangers Drowning's Books is 59lJBgAAQBAJ, Book which was written byLarissa MacFarquharhave ETAG "ll6MmeqfUNs"
Book which was published by Penguin since 2015-09-29 have ISBNs, ISBN 13 Code is 9780698195608 and ISBN 10 Code is 0698195604
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Book which have "336 Pages" is Printed at BOOK under CategoryPsychology
This Book was rated by 6 Raters and have average rate at "4"
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