Buy hardcover here

THE LIFE YOU CAN SAVE
Acting Now to End World Poverty
By Peter Singer
214pp/ Picador / GBP 14.99

In 2004, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art paid USD 45 million for a small Madonna and Child painting by medieval Italian master Duccio. With cataract operations in Africa costing just USD 50 per person, there are now 90,000 people who can’t see anything — let alone a painting — who might otherwise have had their sight saved for the price of a piece of art. Should ......rganization they cover is a staggering 77% (though Singer does not name the guilty party).

Singer concludes that, “The world would be a better place if one could bring about social change merely by making a logical consistent moral argument.” The Life You Can Save falls short of this objective. Nevertheless, Singer offers an engaging and very moral argument as to why the more affluent among us should learn to give more – and how they should go about doing so in the most effective way.