Strangers Drowning

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

By: Larissa MacFarquhar

Narrated by: Larissa MacFarquhar

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 10? They adopt 20. 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.

©2015 Larissa MacFarquhar (P)2015 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“I can imagine Larissa MacFarquhar’s Strangers Drowning being as wonderful to read a hundred years from now as it was this year. The book reports on extreme ‘do-gooders’ - a favorite chapter looks at a couple who adopted 22 children—but its detail-oriented and nonjudgmental intelligence makes it at once morally complex and mythic, modern and timeless.” (Rivka Galchen, The New York Times Book Review)

“Fascinating...The keys to the book’s success are MacFarquhar’s exhaustive journalistic approach and her clear, concise writing…Strangers Drowning is a brilliant jumping-off point to explore where each of us stands morally.” (Chicago Tribune)

“MacFarquhar describes [the altruists’] motivations in elegant, empathetic terms...The stories resound with the universality of fables, events unfold at their own pace, and the overall tone of Strangers Drowning, with its panoramic view of actions and their consequences, seems to draw from the texts of psychology, philosophy, and religion in equal measure, evoking the case study, the thought experiment, and the parable.” (Bookforum)

Profound and heartbreaking

I had no idea what this book was about, or even if it was fiction or nonfiction until I started listening. It was the next book in the queue of my book reading group. Now I plan to buy the book so I can reread the stories and reencounter the questions that MacFarquar raises in her astute examination of altruism. A couple of sections brought me to tears. Excellent reading by the author .

So Good.

An amazing look and not just extraordinary people but the nature of humanity and our mind. I can't recommend it enough.

great book, hard to endure

This book is hard to listen to, precisely because it is so well done. I recommend it, but only for people who can tolerate the incredible pain that these people put themselves through in service of their foreign-seeming desire to save the world around them

Wonderful.

This is a wonderful book. LM's profiles are as always vivid and moving, beautiful and funny, and as a philosopher myself I'm in awe of ability to synthesize the work of philosophers, both contemporary and historical, rendering it accurately, compellingly, deploying it sparingly and to just the right effect. She brings what are to my mind the central questions of moral theory vividly to life, never letting that tension loosen into easy answers. I could keep going. I'm such a fan.

As a side note, LM also turns out to be a great reader of her own essays. She brings the careful, unsentimental, and occasionally wry but not unloving humor that characterizes her prose to the reading task. A pleasure to listen to.

Beautifully Written, Artfully Reasoned

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

The author's voice brings authenticity and intimacy both to the book's stories about individual lives and to its probing analysis larger themes. It becomes clear, in part because of her own reading, that the author cares deeply and personally about the subject. Her reading seems to bring the reader along in her own discovery of these people and answers to questions about what distinguishes radical altruists from others, why such altruists are regarded so skeptically, and ultimately how to lead a moral life. It would be difficult to read (or listen) to the book and continue to live unchanged by it.

somewhat dry but the content is good.

you have to enjoy these kinds of books in order to get through it and enjoy it. its set up as if each person's life is a case study. interesting what different people see as doing good and where they conclude the most need is in the world.

great book

great book. a few times I was aware of the reader becoming tired and then suddenly energetic as though the day of the recording changed. other than that it was fanastic and I listened to it in a short two days.

opened a space for thought.

nice reminder through stories of the various ways humans cope with their reality.makes for a quick delve into the fabric of society and it's effect on our mentality.

Great listen!

This book is thought provoking, relevant to life now, and incredibly interesting. This book makes you examine your life, your choices, and the lives of those around you.
It is an excellent choice for anyone who is curious about the kindness of strangers, and why certain individuals dedicate their lives in service to strangers.

Pretty darn good, if a but critical

This book was recommended to me, as a piece of advice on "do-gooder" ideas I had. While full of excellent, fascinating stories, the book nonetheless excludes the stories of those helped by these "do-gooders". For me, this left the work squarely in the territory of criticism, rather than open minded critical inquiry, and was hard to take deeply to heart.

That said, the stories were rich, engaging, and well chosen and researched, and commentary was thought provoking.