Endowment Books

My daughter has a heart defect and I've used this and 2 of her other books to obtain "flow-through grants" to help with the medical expenses. Try looking in your hospital library for a copy and if they don't have one try the medical social workers. This book is well-organized, and is a great benifit to those who use it.

ken's a bit moody but a pretty good guy. health is improving since he quit smoking, but his staff are feeling the brunt of his life style change.

Preamble: "The Other Balkan Wars" is a reprint of the Report of the International Commission To Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars (1912-1913). It was published by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in May-June of 1993, under the presidentship of Morton Abramovitz.

Professor George F. Kennan has written the Introduction only for this book -date unavailable.

Quite a long time ago, almost twenty years before CEIP president, Morton Abramowitz, has brushed this book from the shelf, I have had the original in my hands, and this with the greatest care. My father, as a volunteer telegraphist was in the midst of the first book's subject.

Giving an opinion of the first and the second edition in English -I have no knowledge of any translation- is a task of the utmost seriousness. Let Good Lord help me to condense my view in less then a thousand words. At that point I will more than gladly respond to your kind offer and continue along this lines.

Sincerely, DJGB Popadich

The first part covers domestic constraints on the way to a peaceful settlement. It's good, after all it's the internal situation that sets some of the limits on what the parties can or cannot do. The second part covers obstacles to a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. This part is better than the first but ignores population growth in Jordan, West Bank and Gaza, which is unforgivable, while stresses its importance in Egypt, which is right. Social friction is not well presented, perhaps the authors are less familiar with cultural issues than with strategy. The book reminds that there are still plenty of possible clashing interests in the region. This is a good thing since people easily forget things that are not immediate threats. Raises a lot of questions.

This book comes with a hefty price - I was hesitant. If you are considering the establishment of your own private foundation, this book is a must. It is fairly heavy with the legaleze, but required when considering the thorough discussions of establishing and maintaining a foundation with respect to the applicable IRS tax code. Each topic is documented and sample tax forms are illustrated. Highly recommended - needs to be a little more user friendly for the 5th star.

I'm biased, because I copyedited this book, but it is very well written and a fascinating study of early-twentieth-century philanthropy. Ever heard of the Russell Sage Foundation? Find out here who he was!

This book appears to be carefully laid out to present the ideas of Jose Marti. Spanish is used on the left-hand page, English on the right, and the paragraphs are numbered for ease in matching them up.

From the back:

Revolutionary, hero of the Cuban War of Independence, poet, essayist, Jose Marti is a towering figure in the intellectual and political history of Spanish America. The thoughts gathered here in a bilingual edition show the breadth of his concerns as well as the depth and clarity of his intellect, and are still timely in the last quarter of the Twentieth Century.

Carlos Ripoll exiled himself from his native Cuba in 1960. He has lived in New York City since then, where he currently is Professor of Romance Languages at Queens College. In 1969 and 1971 he was awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Research Center of the City University of New York to facilitate his work on Jose Marti. Professor Ripoll is the author of five books and many articles on the great Cuban thinker, as well as others on Latin American letters.

An expanded version of the Ohlin Memorial Lectures at the Stockholm School of Economics in 1995, "Unintended Consequences" reads like a book-length recipe. In the first chapter the ingredients are set forth, in the main body of the book they are mysteriously mixed, and at the end, out comes the cake. Just as the oven hides the baking process of the cake, most readers will not quite know how the book's conclusions were reached.

The author begins by setting forth the building blocks of a theory of long-run economic performance, without explicitly stating that theory. Although the lectures supply delightful reading on differences among civilizations the world over, comparing East and West, they lack a coherent theoretical underpinning.... The lectures ramble from one topic to another, each one fascinating in its own right, but without much integration.

In the first chapter (lecture), Lal sets forth two main building blocks of long-run economic performance: relative factor endowments and culture.... In the remaining lectures, the author leads us through explanations of the social and religious systems, the cosmological beliefs, the material factors, the politics, law, society, and economy of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Judea, India, China, and Islam, which he then contrasts with the West. The development of individualism is the key to the West's economic advantage over the other areas. However, he does not specifically say what caused the West to have this advantage. I was particularly disappointed here, because I believe I have set forth a theory to explain that development (in [my 1994 book] "Centuries of Economic Endeavor"), which would have been useful to Lal, but he makes no reference to it.

Lal explains the rise of individualism in the West largely through the evolution of Christianity, beginning with St. Augustine's "City of God." Shame and guilt are principal building blocks in the economies of the West. Those economies he contrasts with the dirigisme and ultimate reform in China and India. His references to the "miracle" economies of East Asia were apparently written before the East Asian financial collapse, which he did not foresee.

Although Lal refers to "unintended consequences" at various points in the book, the biggest unintended consequence is that individualism led to the welfare state. "But individualism has paradoxically undermined the very cement of the prosperous societies it created.... The growing failure of Western states to provide the most basic of public goodsguaranteeing their citizens' safetyis eroding their legitimacy, but it need not dissipate the economic vigor of the West" (p. 176).

In sum, this book constitutes a pleasurable window into the mind of a great thinker, who jumps from one theme to another as if they are all clear in his own mind. But the links may not be readily perceived by the ordinary intellectual.

I have not yet read the book in its entirety, its for a class, but I expect the revised version of the book to include events that the last one missed out on.

I read the first edition of this book and am reading the new revised edition. If you want to know what Putin is really like and where he may be leading Russia, read this book. I gave a copy to a Russian friend who is fluent in English so that I could get a Russian's opinion. She is in India now but I will post her reaction when I get it.

::I havent finished the book, so take this as you will. I'm concerned i wont even bother finishing it so I've given the neutral 3-rating, which is almost certainly better than what I'd give if I actually did finish::

Half way through this and I must agree with the 1-stars, the best single word description of the book is "vacuous". At first i thought the quality may have been a result of the translation to English, but after 200pgs it seems clear that the author is simply not a particularly talented, insightful, or careful journalist or scholar. What these 5-star reviews are billing as an "authoritative" account is really more of an un-hedged meandering narrative. It's not even that I disagree with the author's opinions, I'm not really in any place to. But there are just page after page of them, unrefined "I think"'s and assumptions (and yes, she literally says "I think" several times). This wouldnt have been so bad if it were all backed by substantial research, but its not. Claims and opinions repeatedly go un-sourced; the occasional opinion poll or newspaper article is really all there is to look forward to by way of support. What footnotes there are an absolute joke, at least a third are just further clarification statements by the author, with no sources given at all. After writing several research papers for a not-too-prestigious US university, I can assure you this book couldnt have topped a B-minus for this reason alone.

Additionally, in no subject matter is there any particularly penetrating analysis that you couldn't have gotten somewhere else. The author seems to be forever scratching the surface on some big, interesting issues. This is about the only good thing I can say so far: if you want a summary of the major issues during the Putin years then this might be for you. Or you could just read chronologically every Washington Post or Financial Times headline on Russia from these years. Just the headline.

So yes, I'm utterly disappointed so far. I've seen her quoted in the Financial Times and the Economist many times, as some sort of premo Russia-watcher. And she works for the CEIP's Moscow Centre, which I assumed would produce a decent book. But honestly, it reads like it was written by a very bright college freshman who was struggling to fill space and did so with pointless conjecture rather than actual research. This is Russia, not Mali or Chad. There's no shortage of information and books and articles and data and personalities to draw from, but it all goes virtually untapped. That her arguments are so poorly backed up is simply inexcusable.

What this book does not cover. How did Putin get in office? The country was getting ready to elect a communist government. How did he gain an advantage? Corruption. How is he corrupt, GO into that please. The only way you can be in charge of Russia is with the US help. Please tell the real story please.

The reviewers who give this book a bad rating must have picked up the book expecting a pageturner. This book is not one, in the least. That being said; this book is an excellent academic resource and fairly interesting. But I say 'interesting' from the point of view of a political fanatic. If you are joe shmo you will probably abondon this book after the first chapter.

Excellently written, impressivly informative, and an all around good book.

When I first became interested in grantwriting, I bought this book and committed it to memory. The book gave me a base of knowledge that I used to get my first fundraising job a few months later. I've now been doing grantwriting for five years, and I recommend this book all the time to newbies. The language is clear and straightforward -- and easy to grasp.

This book was nothing but a dissapointment..Did not get me any closer to a grant than I was before I read the book..

This book helped me understand how to go about looking for grants. Also, moderatly helpful when learning how to approach proposals.

A great beginning resource for finding the sources behind all the "free" money that is out there. Blum has taken a great idea and invented a whole category. You'll have to do the heavy lifting, but she takes you through the steps and points you in the right direction. Smart person. Great source.