Charity, Philanthropy, and Civility in American History

By Mark D. McGarvie

Book Overview

Professional historians address the dominant issues and theories offered to explain the history of American philanthropy and its role in American society. These essays develop and enlighten major themes, oftentimes contesting each other in the process. The overarching premise is that philanthropic activity in America has its roots in the desires of individuals to impose their visions of societal ideals, or conceptions of truth, upon their society. To do so, they organize in groups that frequently define themselves and their group's role in society.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 052181989X
• ISBN13: 9780521819893
• Release Date: December 2002
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Great text...

wish I had a better professor teaching the material. This is a great primer to the history of charity and philanthropy. I used it as a text for a Masters level course. The book taught me more than its presentation in the course, but... it happens...

A solid collection

I am puzzled by the acidity of the review by "J Onyx", who contrasts the supposedly unscholarly and "Marxist" authors of this collection with the scholarly "gentleman" Robert Bremner, who wrote various works on the history of American Philanthropy. J Onyx even speculates that these historians waited until Professor Bremner was gone before they published their writings. I was one of Professor Bremner's graduate students at Ohio State and assisted him with his revision of his classic work American Philanthropy. Bob Bremner was indeed a gentleman, and he treated other scholars with an irenic spirit even when he disagreed with them. It is impossible for me to imagine Bob Bremner being so uncharitable of other scholars as J Onyx, or engaging in such an acerbic and inaccurate misrepresentation of a work. This is an important collection of well-researched essays. Anybody interested in the role of philanthropy in American history must begin with this volume.