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A Generous Life

An eclectic and stimulating attempt to create a “new language” around charitable efforts.

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A posthumously published collection of wide-ranging essays by Karoff, an innovator in the field of philanthropy.

In 1989, the author founded The Philanthropic Initiative (TPI), an organization devoted to helping clients charitably donate more strategically. Giving, he avers in this book, is more than the sum of its mechanics—it’s a spiritual calling, a grand “wake-up call,” and the expression of a deep passion. Karoff taught others how to establish a profoundly personal connection to their charitable efforts, and to see philanthropy as a concrete “translation of values to the practice of values.” On a societal level, he envisioned an “open-source philanthropy,” which he defines here as “more effective systems of collective social action” with “less segmentation of issues and more holistic ways of solving problems.” Editor Marble, who worked for TPI, has gathered an eclectic assemblage of essays by the author, who died in 2017; the pieces offer an expansive interpretation of the meaning of philanthropic activity. The author was literarily inclined, and these short works, all composed over the last quarter-century, include his own poems, references to William Butler Yeats and Aristotle, and philosophical discussions of the nature of wealth and generosity. Marble asserts that this collection is not a “how-to manual,” but rather a “dreamer’s guide,” and to some extent, she’s right; in these pages, Karoff never hides his idealistic desire to “make the world a better place,” and unabashedly valorizes the “magic of philanthropy.” However, he does also dispense a considerable amount of actionable counsel about efficient charitable giving. Moreover, he squarely acknowledges the “pressure of reality” and the corresponding danger of naïveté: “From the outset, it is clear that you cannot ‘magic’ away the critical problems facing the world,” he notes. “One of TPI’s operating premises is that ‘social change is incremental at best.’ Thus the waving of wands doesn’t do it.” Overall, these essays are as instructional and insightful as they are inspirational.

An eclectic and stimulating attempt to create a “new language” around charitable efforts.

Pub Date: July 15, 2025

ISBN: 9781633311152

Page Count: 258

Publisher: Disruption Books

Review Posted Online: April 25, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025

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HISTORY MATTERS

A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.

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Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.

McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”

A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025

ISBN: 9781668098998

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025

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A WEALTH OF PIGEONS

A CARTOON COLLECTION

A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.

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The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.

Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.

A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.

Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Celadon Books

Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020

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