Carnegie branch library, East 67th Street, New York. Library of Congress, public domain
PublicAffairs
The Foundation: A Great American Secret
How private wealth is changing the world through foundations.
$20.00
Available · worldwide delivery
- Author
- Joel L. Fleishman
- Publisher
- PublicAffairs
- Published
- January 2009
- Pages
- 0
- Format
- Paperback
- Size
- Standard
- Language
- English
The Library Essay
The Quietest Big Institution in America
Private foundations hold hundreds of billions of dollars and answer, in practice, to almost no one, yet most Americans could not name five of them. Joel Fleishman, a Duke professor who also spent years running a major philanthropic fund, wrote this 2007 study as a friendly insider's audit, documenting through case histories what foundation money has actually accomplished, from the Green Revolution to the 911 emergency system and public television.
The admiration is genuine and so is the criticism; Fleishman argues that secrecy and the absence of consequences make foundations both freer and lazier than any other institution, and calls for the transparency their charters never required. It remains the standard single volume on how organised American giving works, written by someone who wants it to work better.
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