A review by themtj
Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion by Paul Bloom

3.0

I really liked how this book started. It begins with a simple point: empathy is greatly exaggerated in our culture and it is highly valued, while not necessarily being a moral position, it has limits, and can't be taught to the exclusion of other factors. He demonstrates all of this persuasively for the first 1/3rd - 1/2 of the book.

Tragically, like many books in this genre, he extrapolates too far and starts getting into way too many issues. The penultimate chapter seems so unrelated to the premise that I wonder how any editor let it stay in.