[Rakowski's] account of an egalitarian conception of distributive justice in this outstanding book ranks alongside the pioneering work recently done in this area by writers such as John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin ... his sophisticated and humane account of justice is among the most powerful and persuasive I have read ... This is a book that deserves to be–and no doubt will be–taken very seriously indeed.
Introduction; Part I. Equality of Fortune: The presumption in favor of equal shares; Voluntary choices and emergent inequalities; Ineluctable risks: illness and injury; Occupational preferences, effort, and desert; Unequal endowments; Gifts, bequests, and intergenerational obligations; Justice and the transfer of body parts; Part II. Corrective Justice: The problem of liability rules: the failings of wealth maximization as a normative ideal; Outline of a theory of
corrective justice; Illustrations; Part III. Saving and Taking Life: Do numbers count when saving lives?; The relevance of personal characteristics to choices between lives; Killing people or animals to benefit others; Envoi; Bibliography; Index