Buying a Better World
George Soros and Billionaire Philanthropy
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
The incredible, inside story of the man and the organization changing the way we change the world.
George Soros is well known as the legendary speculator who made a fortune betting against the British pound in 1992, but he is also a philanthropist who has spent billions in order to promote democracy around the world. Morton Abramowitz of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace once said that Soros was “the only private citizen with his own foreign policy.”
Anna Porter has interviewed Soros, his senior staff, journalists, politicians, and many others in an attempt to understand the man. Each person has a unique story to tell. Focusing on the last decade, she explores how Soros’s Open Society Foundations have spread his ideas of human rights, democracy, Western liberalism, and participatory capitalism around the globe. These are the ideas Soros has said he considers worth dying for. How have they translated into reality? What will his legacy be?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
George Soros built his financial empire trading in high-risk derivatives while giving away billions of dollars to scholars, human rights activists, nonprofit organizations, and educational institutions. Based on interviews with Soros and his friends, colleagues, and business partners, Porter (The Ghosts of Europe) writes an extraordinary biography of the billionaire, focusing on his legacy. She traces numerous activities of the Open Society Foundation, an international charitable organization founded by Soros "to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens." Branches of the foundation have emerged in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Africa, South East Asia, and the U.S., and Morton Abramowitz of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace dubbed Soros the "only private citizen with his own foreign policy." But Porter notes that Soros's belief that money can make a world a better place if you are able "to intervene at the right moment" is challenged by ongoing problems in the places where he has invested. She quotes the aphorism (often erroneously attributed to Churchill) that "Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm," but questions how many failures the foundation can sustain while still laying claim to making things better and how long it can survive. John Pearce, Westwood Creative Artists.
