A highly readable and thought-provoking set of interviews about leveraging wealth to make the world a better place.
Jafar presents a collection of experts’ and pundits’ reflections on the commerce of philanthropy.
In his nonfiction debut, the author paints a wide-range portrait of the current state of the world and the challenges that it poses to contemporary philanthropic institutions: “The geopolitical fractures that constitute the headlines every day—regional conflicts, political extremism, and the resulting refugee and humanitarian crises,” he writes, “are compounded by environmental challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, energy and food shortages, and global health crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.” Wealth is being created at unprecedented rates everywhere in the emerging markets of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, he notes, and whether motivated by an urge to give back to communities, religious obligations, or government incentives, “strategic philanthropy,” as Jafar calls it, has likewise been on the rise. But in many of these countries, as the author points out, “next-generation donors are demanding more hands-on and evidence-based approaches to giving, and higher standards of accountability and transparency.” In this book, he collects many detailed interviews he’s conducted with CEOs and industry leaders, young and old, and the perspectives range over many aspects of philanthropy. Naina Subberwal Batra, CEO of Singapore-based AVPN, points out that although Southeast Asian countries have been involved in philanthropic causes for centuries, it needs much more “institutional” philanthropy to meet the needs of the modern world, and Wamda Group Chairman Fadi Ghandour reflects on the connection between business and philosophy: “This story of ‘the business of business is only business’ doesn’t work anymore,” he warns. “There is a social responsibility for business, not only in the PR sense.”
Jafar’s collection of reflections on “strategic philanthropy” must contend with the common criticism that some wealthy philanthropists pursue their activities not only to help humankind, but also, as Ghandour notes, for good PR. Cynical readers are likely to find some fuel for such criticism in these pages, which feature reflections by princes, sheiks, sultans, and at least one baroness. Certainly, there are questionable moments, as when readers are told of an annual roundtable that has “welcomed nearly 40 philanthropists from around the world”—a not-inconsiderable outlay of air-traffic carbon emissions for an event that aims to address sustainable carbon emissions. However, there are also a great many earnest, heartfelt sentiments in this book about the urgent need for giving, especially in the modern moment: “We are not human beings anymore, because the word ‘human’ doesn’t exist in economic jargon,” says the well-known professor Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Jafar also proves himself to be a skilled interviewer, highlighting conversations that are uniformly engaging, particularly when multiple subjects bring up common concerns. For instance, Jacqueline Novogratz, the CEO of the award-winning not-for-profit Acumen, is not the only interviewee to mention how the new interconnectedness of the modern world affects philanthropic activities. Overall, this balance makes the book a compelling read throughout.
A highly readable and thought-provoking set of interviews about leveraging wealth to make the world a better place.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9780008620950
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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