Content area
Full Text
The Heart of Altruism: Perceptions of a Common Humanity. By Kristen Renwick Monroe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. 283p. $29.95.
This valuable and often moving book is divided between accounts of Monroe's extensive interviews with people who have made exceptional commitments to helping others and analysis that (mainly) challenges rational choice analysis of social behavior. In particular, Monroe wants to show that behavior exists which not only cannot be reduced to selfinterest but also cannot be accounted for by a utility calculus of any kind, even one allowing for motivation beyond narrow self-interest. She covers a range of cases, but the most important for her, and also the most moving and striking for a reader, are cases of people under Nazi rule who risked their lives to rescue Jews. Indeed, on its face such behavior flagrantly defies explanation in terms of a utility calculus....