What Makes Charity Work?

A compassionate America has spent more than $5 trillion on welfare programs over three decades, but the poor haven't vanished, and the self-destructive behavior that imprisons many in poverty has become an intergenerational inheritance. Drawing on the City Journal's superlative reporting, What Makes Charity Work? shows in concrete and compelling detail how government assistance to the poor is doomed to failure _ because it treats them as victims of forces beyond their control, robs them of a sense of personal responsibility, and neglects the virtues they need to escape poverty. Contrasting case studies of charities both old and new show how charity can succeed spectacularly when it encourages the poor to take control of their own lives and teaches them habits of self-reliance and the traditional virtues. Here are accounts of charities that follow these precepts and have not only brought individuals into the economic and social mainstream but have delivered whole classes of people from poverty and degradation into the middle class in a single generation. As welfare reform unfolds, and as the nation calculates how to implement the 'charitable choice' provision of the 1996 welfare reform act that allows government to use private and religious charities in helping the poor, policymakers and concerned Americans will find both encouraging and cautionary case studies in What Makes Charity Work? Here is an urgent issue considered in vivid, practical, and unfailingly absorbing fashion.

ISBN 1566633346   DEWEY edition DC21 ISBN13 9781566633345 (What's this?)   Pages 256 Publisher Ivan R Dee, Inc   Volumes 1 Imprint Ivan R Dee, Inc   Weight (grammes) 472 Format Hardback   Published in Chicago Publication date 12 Sep 2000   Height (mm) 227 Writer of introduction Magnet, Myron   Width (mm) 159 Library of Congress 00034563   Spine width (mm) 24 DEWEY 361.20973   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly

		Introduction
		How Dagger John Saved New York's Irish by William J. Stern		3
		Once We Knew How to Rescue Poor Kids by William J. Stern		23
		How the Agency Saved My Father by Howard Husock		41
		Philanthropy That Worked by Leo Trachtenberg		69
		Why the Boy Scouts Work by Heather MacDonald		89
		How Catholic Charities Losts Its Soul by Brian C. Anderson		108
		Behind the Hundred Neediest Cases by Heather MacDonald		124
		The Billions of Dollars That Made Things Worse by Heather MacDonald		145
		What Good Is Pro Bono? by Heather MacDonald		172
		How Businessmen Shouldn't Help the Schools by Sol Stern		190
		Who Says the Homeless Should Work? by Sol Stern		207
		At Last, a Job Program That Works by Kay S. Hymowitz		217
		A Note on Contributors		231
		Index		233

City Journal is consistently the most stimulating source of reporting and analysis.--Will, George

 Be the first to write a customer review