Altruisme rationnel: a French book on effective giving, out November 5

Published on October 28, 2026 5:05 PM GMT By Pablo Melchor and Romain Barbe Summary Altruisme rationnel comes out in France on November 5. It is a French edition of Pablo’s Altruismo racional, co-authored with Romain, with content rewritten or newly written for French readers. Pablo and Romain founded and run the Spanish and French effective-giving orgs: Ayuda Efectiva and Mieux Donner. The new book makes the case for “classical EA” to a general French audience: the world’s poorest people are largely invisible to us, ordinary people can do far more good than they think, and some ways of helping do vastly more than others. All author royalties go to highly effective charities. If you want to help: share it with French speakers, suggest French media we could reach out to, or get in touch if you are considering something similar in your own language. The previous experience in Spain Altruismo racional came out in September 2025. It sold decently, even well compared to the Spanish market, opened (or reopened) doors to media and podcasts, and fueled the growth of Ayuda Efectiva. It also became an outreach tool: Ayuda Efectiva and others bought copies in bulk to hand out at conferences and to potential donors. A year on, Pablo still thinks writing it was the best use of his time. How Altruisme rationnel happened The initiative came from Pablo. His Spanish book was doing well, and the publisher was opening a French branch. He could have simply had it translated with them, keeping the content as it was. Instead, he proposed that Romain become a co-author so that the book could become a valuable asset for Mieux Donner in France. That meant giving up part of the ownership and spending time rewriting. Romain’s first question was whether the Spanish sales came from Pablo’s own reach in Spain or from the book finding readers on its own. If it was the former, a French edition would need a French author with an audience of his own, which argued for co-authorship. Time was the only real obstacle. We went through the main cruxes, concluded that the expected value was clearly positive since most of the book already existed, and got started. Was co-writing hard? Writing a book takes a lot of time. The co-writing part was easy. Everything lived in a Google Doc. We split sections, left comments and resolved each other’s open threads. Decisions were fast because we had agreed on the book’s goals. It had two jobs: convince someone who has never encountered these ideas, and give the existing community something they would want to pass on. Every proposed addition or cut faced the same question: does this serve one of those two jobs? That settled most disagreements before they even became disagreements, including painful ones about cutting good material to stay under 270 pages. What changed from the Spanish edition Most of the new material exists to make the book work in France: Foreign aid. Romain had written a report on the effectiveness of official development assistance, so this section is longer. It also matters more now than when the Spanish edition came out, with rich countries cutting their aid budgets. Impact measurement in France. Romain has spent a lot of time studying this sector. There is a French story to tell about how often impact is claimed and how rarely it is demonstrated. Climate. A lot of our French donors, and many people who start out wanting to do good, are worried about climate and focus on it first, so leaving it out would have been odd. The section stays short: one example, and an explanation of how the same principles apply. Animal welfare. Pablo had deliberately kept it out of the Spanish edition to focus on one single message. We added it for two French reasons:  The EA community in France is close to animal advocacy, so a book that ignored it would be harder for that community to champion.  We had a strong example: a French charity that found its vegetarian-menu campaign risked increasing caged-hen suffering, changed course, and now works to get hens out of cages.  Title and subtitle. The title is a literal translation. The subtitle went from “why we can help more and how to do it better” to “beyond good intentions, how to really help”, chosen as the framing most likely to make someone open the book (a literal French translation of the original would also have been too heavy). What makes this book different Three things, beyond the French context. It is written from Europe. The existing books on effective giving in French are translations of Singer and MacAskill, with English-speaking examples and charities. It reads as a conversation. We are both in the text, with our own paths and our own mistakes. An early reader, a former deputy editor at a French national newspaper, said it felt like sitting across from us, raising objections that we answered as they came. It takes the bad reasons seriously. “NGOs are corrupt”, “I already pay taxes”, “it should be the state’s job”, “the rich should give mor