While some passages can be a bit bland, this financial work delivers a succinct helping of historical illumination.
A debut book examines charitable gift annuities in America.
A charitable gift annuity—a financial device in which in exchange for an offering, a nonprofit organization provides fixed payments to a donor—is a concept that seems simple enough on the surface. But in Brown’s exhaustive work, readers learn that these annuities have a storied past. While the author makes mention of similar instruments in Ancient Rome and the Middle Ages, his in-depth investigation begins with a man named Benjamin Silliman. Silliman helped strike quite an arrangement for Yale in 1831, in which in exchange for paintings of the American Revolution by John Trumbull, the university would agree to pay the artist $1,000 annually for the rest of his life. The deal would require hard work and negotiations due to the fact that $1,000 was a considerable sum at the time and Yale was in need of funding. Following particulars of the Yale agreement, the book transports readers to the 1920s, a time in which there was a great interest in gift annuities. The gift annuity campaign of the American Bible Society was flush with advertisements and informative pamphlets. Of course throughout the rise of these annuities, a main concern was always the threat of default—“a nonprofit failing to make its legally required payments to annuitants who trusted the charity and depended on its promise of lifetime payments.” Later portions of the work explore methods to prevent defaults and the necessarily morbid concept of assembling “mortality tables” for donors. While charitable gift annuities seem an unlikely subject for a Ken Burns documentary anytime soon, this book offers some intriguing insights. Readers may not thrill to the finer points of ABS meetings (such as this quote from one in 1927: “At this conference a detailed report on annuity rates as determined by objective was made by George A. Huggins of Philadelphia, the actuary who made the detailed study of the ABS’s annuities about a year ago”). But many details are extremely telling. To realize the renowned Yale needed money in the 1800s because, among other concerns, “the library was aging and small” is to appreciate the ways in which times and institutions change. In a similar vein, the explosion of gift annuities during the booming ’20s is an item even history-conscious readers may be unaware of. Audiences with any interest in America’s past know that the ’20s were roaring, but that they thundered with ABS ads touting an economically practical way for believers to give is likely to come as a revelation. Aside from the obvious takeaway of learning about charitable gift planning, the volume provides a further understanding of various periods and how beliefs from those eras have helped shape the present day.
While some passages can be a bit bland, this financial work delivers a succinct helping of historical illumination.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5301-9732-3
Page Count: 389
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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