Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help

This gripping first book from New Yorker staff writer MacFarquhar is a scrupulous study of people selflessly devoted to helping others. In the introduction, she distinguishes between "heroes" (who help their families or communities in times of need) and "do-gooders" (who feel a moral obligation to help strangers, or other species), discussing why people invariably admire the former and don't always like or trust the latter. MacFarquhar goes on to profile various do-gooders: an animal-rights activist driven to give voice to the plight of chickens, a man who founded a leper colony in India at a time when coming into contact with lepers was unthinkable, and a woman who feels compelled to give everything she possibly can to organizations that will help the most people, among others. These singular biographies are threaded together with chapters examining the cultural history of how we view altruism, including the implications of Darwin's theory of natural selection, Freudian pathologizing of selflessness, the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous, and the rise of the theory of codependency. MacFarquhar herself takes no stance for or against do-gooders, or about why they make the choices they do, but the book is no less engrossing and thought provoking for its lack of concrete answers. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency. (Sept.)