"The Good American is a story about courage, intense loneliness, and the State Department's golden age during the late Cold War and post-Cold War. It is also a celebration of ground level reporting and getting a worm's eye view of crisis zones. Robert Gersony, a high-school dropout later awarded a bronze star in Vietnam, spent over four decades on the ground in virtually every war and natural disaster zone in the world. Interviewing hundreds of refugees and displaced persons in each place to assess humanitarian crises, Gersony's research and thorough reports had an immense, underappreciated impact on US foreign policy across the globe. In every case, his recommendations made it smarter and more humane, often dramatically so. In his career as a journalist, Robert D. Kaplan often crossed paths with Gersony while covering the "hot" moments of the Cold War and its aftermath. Even as a biography, this is Kaplan's most personal book to date, and through Gersony's story, he makes a poignant case for how American diplomacy should be conducted--with a clear eye toward facts on the ground--at a time when diplomacy is too often being left behind."--

Finalist, 2008 Pulitzer Prize Lincoln Kirstein was a tireless champion of the arts in America. Working behind the scenes to provide artists with money, space, audiences, and, at times, emotional support, he helped found such landmark cultural institutions as the New York City Ballet, the School of American Ballet, New York’s Lincoln Center and Stratford's American Shakespeare Festival. Duberman's biography sheds light on this lamentably neglected cultural figure. Though best known as a benefactor of the arts, Kirstein was also an adept critic, poet and novelist who published some fifteen books in his lifetime. From his undergraduate years at Harvard, where he established the influential literary magazine Hound and Horn , as well as the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art (precursor to the Modern Museum of Art), to his complex and historically significant relationship with George Balanchine, Kirstein's contributions were indespensible to the development of the arts in America. Authoritative and elegant, Duberman's biography utilizes previously unavailable documents, including Kirstein's diaries, to reveal the keen eye, incessant self-doubt, and enormous ambition that drove Kirstein's relentless advocacy. The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein brings attention to an important, but until-now unappreciated figure whose individual contribution to the arts was one of the greatest of the twentieth century.

Eli Broad?s embrace of "unreasonable thinking" has helped him build two Fortune 500 companies, amass personal billions, and use his wealth to create a new approach to philanthropy. He has helped to fund scientific research institutes, K-12 education reform, and some of the world?s greatest contemporary art museums. By contrast, "reasonable" people come up with all the reasons something new and different can?t be done, because, after all, no one else has done it that way. This book shares the "unreasonable" principles-from negotiating to risk-taking, from investing to hiring-that have made Eli Broad such a success.

Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932) rose from modest means as the son of a peddler to immense wealth at the helm of Sears, Roebuck. Yet his most defining legacy stands not upon his business acumen but on the pioneering changes he introduced to the practice of philanthropy. While few may recall Rosenwald's name--he refused to have it attached to the buildings, projects, or endowments he supported--his passionate support of Jewish and African American causes continues to influence lives to this day. This biography of Julius Rosenwald explores his attitudes toward his own wealth and his distinct ideas about philanthropy, positing an intimate connection between his Jewish consciousness and his involvement with African Americans. The book shines light on his belief in the importance of giving in the present to make an impact on the future, and on his encouragement of beneficiaries to become partners in community institutions and projects. Rosenwald emerges from these pages as a compassionate man whose generosity and wisdom transformed the practice of philanthropy itself.

Humanitarian, philanthropist, and campaigner for Jewish emancipation on a grand scale, Sir Moses Montefiore (1784–1885) was the preeminent Jewish figure of the nineteenth century - and one of the first truly global celebrities. His story, told here in full for the first time, is a remarkable and illuminating tale of diplomacy and adventure. Abigail Green's sweeping biography follows Montefiore through the realms of court and ghetto, tsar and sultan, synagogue and stock exchange. Interweaving the public triumph of Montefiore's foreign missions with the private tragedy of his childless marriage, this book brings the diversity of nineteenth-century Jewry brilliantly to life - from London to Jerusalem, Rome to St. Petersburg, Morocco to Istanbul. Here we see the origins of Zionism and the rise of international Jewish consciousness, the faltering birth of international human rights, and the making of the modern Middle East. With the globalization and mobilization of religious identities now at the top of the political agenda, Montefiore's life story is relevant as never before. Mining materials from eleven countries in nine languages, Green's masterly biography bridges the East-West divide in modern Jewish history, presenting the transformation of Jewish life in Europe, the Middle East, and the New World as part of a single global phenomenon. As it reestablishes Montefiore's status as a major historical player, it also restores a significant chapter to the history of our modern world.

Tells the story of how wealthy businessman Julius Rosenwald came to financially support the building of 5,300 schools in rural African-American communities that desperately needed them over the course of twenty years.

Original title: Forty years of struggle for a principle (through 1928), edited by Herbert S. Goldstein; continuation (1928-1941), written by Harry Fischel; augmented edition (through 1948 and beyond), edited by Aaron I. Reichel.