Customer Reviews

The Power of Half: One Family's Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

It is pretty frustrating to read some of the reviews on here, and the criticism directed towards this book and family elsewhere on the web.

Many Americans, including myself, love America because of the freedom with which we can live our lives here. We are not taxed to nearly the levels of most European countries and have higher home-ownership and a greater degree of meritocratic upward mobility. Everyone is free to buy what they can afford (sometimes more, but that's a different story), love who they want to love, work where they want to work, and live where they want to live.

If there were a wealthy family which you knew nothing about, and through some real estate deal they came into an extra $800,000, you wouldn't criticize them for purchasing a new yacht instead of a new jet... it's their money, so its their choice. SO WHY IS IT that so many people in favor of all the CHOICES that come with living in a democratic free-market nation like this one feel the need to criticize the choice of the Salwen family to mobilize their huge donation in Ghana, rather than in the US?

As a patriotic American, I care that people in my country are suffering from hunger, health problems they can't afford to treat, and foreclosures on their homes. As a doctor who enjoys living in the US and has no plans to move abroad, I make it a priority to do my part to help who I can, which for me sometimes involves seeking out and treaking vulnerable Americans in my community with low or no charge. HOWEVER, as a rational being, I know that any donations I make to charity (which so far, have been a pittance compared to what this family has done), will go much further if executed correctly in many other parts of the world. $800,000 used productively (ie - not just "giving out food and money" but instead creating self-sustaining programs which help folks get educated, grow food in an optimal way, and set up small businesses), can go way further in Ghana than it can in the US, where things are more expensive and the average person is way better off in absolute terms.

For the person who recommended that the Salwens donate money towards reducing the subprime burden in their own Atlanta community instead of picking out some 'random' Ghanian village, I say: (1) I would be delighted if instead of buying a yacht or a plane or keeping their mansion, they helped about 10 needy American families get back on their feet financially with $80,000 of debt forgiveness each; but (2) I am MORE delighted that they chose to make an impact that will help about 10 THOUSAND people get on their feet. People are people - no matter what patriotic way you slice it, helping a thousand Ghanians is more impactful than helping out one American. When you have little prior information about the person you're directing your philanthropy towards, why not donate where your money goes the furthest and can in fact be transformative?

Not that I have the authority to praise or criticize their decision in the first place... it's THEIR MONEY after all.



PS. The book is decently written and readable, not a masterpiece of literature... But I gave it five stars for the IDEA behind it and the hope that it will inspire many. Has definitely inspired me.

We live in a society that is increasingly fueled by consumption, bombarded by subtle and not so subtle messages that our value is measured by the amount and quality of our acquisitions. Like many of us, the Salwens were running fast on the treadmill to the American success story. Although they had a better than passing awareness of poverty, donating time and money to improve the lives of others, there was the nagging sense that more could be done. Unlike many of us, they were willing to ask difficult questions about the inequities in the world and more importantly, to make the personal changes that would create greater security and opportunity for others. This family is articulate, cohesive, educated, financially and socially privileged and it would be easy to write their story off as impossible for average folks. The truth is, there are few people with nothing to give. It is always easy to see what the next guy could/should/might do but not as comfortable when it comes to letting go of the things that WE deem to be non-negotiable. Without judgment, this book offers honest insight into the psychology if consumption and the way that it diminishes our ability to see beyond our own sense of entitlement. It serves too as a reminder that while generosity cannot be demanded, it is easily invited. Each chapter includes input from the Salwen children with practical suggestions for ways that any interested family or individual can become involved. "Changing lives" is a very possible process that benefits everyone who is willing to commit to doing their part. This is a book that should be read and discussed by families, faith communities, educators, activists and non-activists alike.

The Power of Half is the story of an American family who decides to sell their 6,500 square foot home, buy another smaller house, and then donate approximately half of the sales price to charity. The tale is told primarily by the father, Kevin Salwen, with a few pages of commentary at the end of each chapter by his teenage daughter, Hannah.

With the exception of matching the stereotype of an American family of four (father, mother, son, and daughter), the Salwens are not a typical American family. The parents are highly educated and have achieved sufficient financial success early in their careers to now pursue their dream jobs as a teacher and owner of a magazine start-up. The children attend an elite private school, play sports, take lessons, and go to camp. Admittedly having bought into achieving an ever-escalating standard of living, the Salwens still included community service into their lives by participating in Habitat for Humanity, Meals on Wheels, and the United Way, involving their children when possible.

One day, Hannah has an epiphany, and challenges why we cannot create equilibrium between the have and have-nots of the world. This eventually leads to a family decision to sell their large house, buy something half in size, and donate the difference to charity. Once they make this decision, the Salwen family moves quickly, buying a smaller house just a few blocks away, and they start a massive house cleaning, donating or throwing out things that will not fit in their new home. They immediately encounter some drawbacks to their plans, including concerned reactions from their friends, and that their larger house lingered on the market unsold.

In parallel to the moving activities, the Salwen family began to work on selecting a charity, beginning with defining their guiding principles, research, interviews of charities, and planning. They eventually agree to fund the building of two epicenters in Ghana. The epicenters support up to a dozen villages, each represent a $400,000, five-year commitment and aim to help the villagers become healthier and more self-reliant. For me, the most enjoyable parts of The Power of Half is the process of selecting the charities, the research done by Kevin Salwen on the reasons why the Western world has failed to "rescue" Africa, and the family's trip to Ghana.

Over time, the Salwen family begins to find great personal rewards and satisfaction from their plan. The two teen-age children become more confident, articulate, and mature. The family spends more time together, developing a deeper understanding of each other and closer bonds.

The commitment of the Salwen family is admirable, and funding their $800,000 donation through a dramatic change to their own lifestyle is something that very few people could or would actually do. Kevin Salwen's writing is professional, introspective, and respectful of his family and friends. The Power of Half is a powerful and enlightening book for anyone interested in charitable giving, reducing consumption, and developing family relationships. However (and I will probably get a lot of unhelpful votes for this!), at times the story is sanctimonious and the tone patronizing. Although I have a great deal of respect for what the Salwen family did, and think The Power of Half is well-written, the story is out of touch with the reality that exists for most American families.

While I enjoyed this book at the beginning, after a while the tone began to wear on me. To hear the authors speak of their "hardship" of giving up a massive house for a "much smaller" one of 3000+ feet over and over again got very old. They tried to make it sound like they were sacrificing. While giving any money to charity is noble, doing so while lauding one's own imagined hardships is a careful line to walk. This book fails in that respect. The authors try to make it sound like they are doing a major undertaking. Yes, moving houses is hard. Then we find out the wife is a founder a hugely successful company-one where each founder made hundreds of millions. So we're expected to feel empathy for this family giving $800k?

Don't get me wrong, I love their idea. I've acted on what I read here. I just think they missed the boat by trying to sound average. Their wealth is so far above what most people dream of that they come off as patronizing. The book really came across as: give half if you happen to be very rich. If you're middle class, donate clothes to a homeless shelter. There wasn't any middle ground.


Good concept, great idea, poorly laid out, and very thin on other charitable ideas.

I love the concept of what this family is trying to do. I think it's a great idea and wish there's more people thinking like this. I just wish the book was written a lot better. Hopefully, the final/edited version will be a bit more polished than the ARC that I got.

I love the idea of downsizing into a smaller house, donating half of the real estate proceeds to a charity that actually practiced what it preaches and trying to make a difference in the world. I love the idea of the family coming together to communicate about how to make a difference even if it is just a couple of villages in a faraway country ... hopefully, those two villages will pass the kindness and the lessons onto other villages until more and more people are not subsisting on just a dollar a day.

I have to admit that I rolled my eyes a lot throughout this book ... I know the author means well, but his writing style comes across so pretentious that it's hard to take his message so seriously. Not only that, it makes me wonder if some corporations are sponsoring him because he keeps dropping product names throughout the book (such as peeling the label off of Deer Park water bottle or the sweat soaking his Land's End polo shirt ... who really cares?). Those details may be minor in comparison to the message that the Salwens are trying to share, but they are annoying.

The Salwens are a family of four, a husband and wife along with two children, who decided as a family to give up half of what they own to support a village in Africa. That's the simplest version of this book. The book goes into details about how Hannah, the oldest child, who is also the first one to dream of this project, found out about a jarringly different world outside her priviledged life. It started with a volunteer project at school where the classmates went downtown to Atlanta to help serve the homeless. Instead of seeing them as faceless people, Hannah began to realize that these same people have feelings and dreams as she has ... and the more she talked about it, the more her family realized that they needed to do something to make a difference.

This is their story and while it is tedious to read in places and can use some serious editing/polishing, it is a thoughtful story of a family who came together to make a difference in the world. If I was to read this again, I would start with the last chapter. The last chapter was the chapter that convinced me that this book was a worthwhile read. My recommendation? Read that chapter first (not the Epilogue) because it will tell you where the family is at now and it ties up everything as well as providing a depth to the family story that needed to be told.

1/9/10

Kids are known for coming up with some crazy ideas -- but selling the family's house and giving away half the net proceeds? That's a new one! But the suggestion was a matter of connecting the dots for 15-year-old Hannah Salwen. Their upwardly mobile family of four had a lot, and many out there had little, so it made sense to share.

This book, written jointly by Hannah and her dad, Kevin, traces the family's journey from living the high life to deciding to give it all up, to sorting through their options (and their possessions!) to determine where to direct their $800,000 gift.

I loved the concept -- a family willingly stepping off the treadmill -- and I found the book easy to read and the story realistic and compelling. I liked that the Salwens didn't make it all rosy and perfect: There were moments of horror, of "What have we done??!!" and moments of confusion and panic.

I wonder if this book was written too soon, though. What was missing for me was the after-story. Now that the decision has been made, let's have the family reflect from a comfortable difference to tell us how their lives changed -- and how the Africans' lives have changed because of their sponsorship. I would like to have seen the Salwens wait another few years before setting pen to paper and writing a book about the experience.

What also ruffled me a bit was the way the family focused so much on the lessons learned along the way as a result of the process. It was almost like they knew they were going to write a book about the experience, and so they took copious notes and held family council meetings and wrote in their journals and documented the whole thing and were on their best behaviors because they were going to have to report this down the road. That could be completely false, but it came across that way to me a bit (c'mon, who really has half-day whiteboard sessions with their teenage kids?).

All in all, I give the book high marks. It made me reflect on the legacy our own family is leaving, and what we want that legacy to be. Congratulations to the Salwens for being willing to put their money where their mouths are.

It is a well- established fact that Americans like to consume. We like our adult toys, both for the personal enjoyment they bring and for their use as a symbol of our status. Very few Americans are willing to give up their massages, expensive automobiles, designer clothing, oversized homes, or anything else, but the Salwen family decided that enough was enough. Inspired by daughter Hannah, the Salwens agreed, as a family, to sell their beautiful, spacious home, move into something more reasonable, and take the leftover money from the home sale to donate to a good cause. They didn't want to just write a check, however. They wanted to find a specific cause and support it directly. They end up working among the people of Ghana, helping them find solutions to some of their many problems.

The Power of Half is an interesting concept for a book and what the Salwen's did was certainly noteworthy and inspiring. Not many Americans would be willing to give up their toys for any reason. But the Salwens agreed as a family that this was the right thing to do. Daughter Hannah got the ball rolling and the others eventually came around, agreeing that they did not need so many material possessions and that their time and money would be better utilized if spent in the service of the needy.

The Power of Half is an interesting book for several different reasons. I like the family communication and the open discussions that take place between parents and children. I also like the sacrifices that the Salwens make. Sure, they are already very well- off financially so making the sacrifice wasn't as difficult as it might be for others, but I still commend them for having the guts to go through with such a drastic, life- changing event. However, I do have a few problems with this book that prevent me from rating it much better than average. First, the family patriarch, Kevin, is a bit on the pretentious side. Kevin and Hannah Salwen composed the book and along the way, Kevin seems to pat himself on the back at every opportunity. There is nothing wrong with a little family pride, but Kevin takes this a little too far. Second, I was annoyed that this book didn't have more to say about specific people in Ghana. You don't really get to know the Ghana natives at all. There are no anecdotes, no success stories from an individual or family from Ghana who was directly influenced by the Salwen's charitable works. I'm sure that some success stories exist, but the book doesn't include any. Also, the book dwells a little too much on the sale of the Salwen's home and the decision- making process that led them to Ghana. It would have been better to devote more pages to the actual African experience.

Yet another problem I have with The Power of Half is that the immersion experience only goes halfway. The Salwen's stay in hotels and eat well. They don't live among the people and develop a feel for their lifestyle. They avoid true immersion, and this takes a little away from the story and it will leave some readers disappointed. I have read other, similar books about individuals immersing themselves in the local culture and it adds tremendously to their understanding of the culture and lifestyle of the native people. But the Salwen's apparently felt that total immersion would be too much shock to the system. Giving up the family mansion was bad enough.

I like that The Power of Half encourages similar charitable thinking in other people, but the book's advice and recommendation that everyone find a way to get by with half, in some aspect of their lives, might be a little unrealistic. The Salwen family's sacrifice is noteworthy, but one must realize that the Salwen's come from a privileged, upper class background. Not to downplay what the Salwen's did, because it is still admirable, but cutting your home in half is much more viable when you own a 5,000 square foot home than when you own a 2,000 square foot home. True, there are other ways/areas to downsize by half, but regardless of the targeted area, cutting something by fifty percent will not be as easy for some families as it is for others.

Americans live in a consumer- oriented society and most of us could get by with less. The basic concept of Power of Half is good, for it encourages charitable activity and the stripping away of our consumer excesses. The Salwen's deserve respect for sacrificing the way they did, in service to their fellow human beings. But the book's lack of anecdotes, the self- absorbed writing, and other problems lead to an average rating overall. I love the concept, but much like the book's title, I felt only half- satisfied when I finished reading.

I liked the premise of this book a lot, but I'm still a little torn at the end on how I feel about where they took it. Usually, when I accept a copy of a book for review, while I'm reading it I have a pretty good sense of how well its doing what it set out to do and whether I could tell other people it's worth reading, but here I'm really not sure.

In a way it's always inspiring when someone decides to do something really big. For just about anyone, selling your house and giving away half the proceeds is a big thing to do. I also really do like that they spent a lot of time thinking deeply about what to do with that money, and giving some insight into the fact that it's not just making an effort for others that's important, you should also try to make sure that you focus on somewhere that you can have a real impact.

I very much agree with the theme of social engagement and the dangers of getting too caught up in consumer culture. On the other hand, I think in a way it seems very explicitly intended to inspire us to give 'half' in some way ourselves and I guess I feel like they may be underestimating what that sacrifice would represent to other people. They were starting from a particularly privileged position financially that made something like this more viable. They do mention the possibility of giving up half in other areas of your life, but in general I suppose it just feels like they're setting the bar so high that they're less likely to really inspire action on the scale they're trying to recommend than to just leave readers thinking "Well some people can do that, but it's not going to work in MY life..."

I suppose in the end I like the theme and the conscious message a lot, but it felt like they were trying too hard, giving the impression everyone else would have to try too hard, and generally sounding too much like the whole thing was a book in the making from the beginning. I still think it's a decent book and it has the potential to be a source of enlightenment and inspiration, it's just not quite what it could have been.

When I saw that the author's live in the Atlanta area and this was a book about their daughter and family's journey into sacrificing to help others I knew this was a book I had to read. I was primed to really like this family and be moved by their story.

The book turned out to be more a story of project-management (which they may be successful at...the book ends without us knowing whether there is any real fruit being harvested by those they planned to help) and parenting responsible, decent children (which they are definitely successful at.)

Because I live near Atlanta I know that the Salwen's are upper "class" folks living in an upscale neighborhood with children attending schools that cost $20+k per year to attend (per child.) I begrudge them none of this. However, knowing that the only thing they appear to have cut in half is their home's "value" leaves me knowing that while they have done a great thing in donating sizable financial resources to alleviate poverty in Africa, they really haven't given anything that cost them dearly. They still live well, have substantial savings and investments that allow them to live well with two expensive homes and still write an $80k check, attend private schools and experienced no change in lifestyle, etc.

While I think their children have learned good critical thinking skills, how to make a commitment and stick with it, I was left with a sad feeling at the end of the book. In the end this felt like a very clinical, business-like approach to "managing" the ugly reality of poverty. Hannah and her family will still be seeing the homeless men (in growing numbers right now) in Atlanta poised beside the BMW/Mercedes crowd. Nothing appears to have changed either for the man that inspired Hannah's idea or for Hannah herself.

In the event that the family reads this review, I hope this and other reviews like it do not discourage you from continuing to give. I don't think that is the point of any of the reviewers (or myself.) I think we are hoping that you take another huge leap and share your successes and growth with us.

I'd like to ask Hannah a question (in a truly loving manner, Hannah, because I think you are fine young woman with incredible potential): How do you feel now when you continue to drive by the growing number homeless men, women and little children next to the BMWs and Mercedes on the streets of Atlanta? Should you encounter one of these people as you leave your $20k/year school grounds, are you conscious of the fact that between school, housing, transportation, food, utilities, clothing and entertainment, your family spends hundreds of dollars a day to maintain just your own individual lifestyle? You may not have considered this before, but I promise you if you do the math it is literally hundreds a day. Perhaps enough in a day to pay for a single mom to go back to school to learn a trade, or day care for a month so she can get a start in her new job, or rehab for the addicted veteran, or six monthly Marta passes for minimum-wage workers trying to get ahead. You've been given incredible privileges (rich in finances and family and education). To whom much has been given, much is required. I'm glad you serve with our local social service groups to help others. You have the time, talent and treasure to do radically more than that. I hope you are able to channel those blessings into serving in an administrative capacity (which may require working for a fraction of what you are "worth" but surprise you with the joy of being rich in other ways) for a group or organization that captures your heart.

I think this family is a good family with very good intentions. I am happy that this experience tightened their bonds as a family at a time when families are completely disintegrating. I just can't imagine this book inspiring many people. It would have helped a great deal if the Salwens had waited to write the book a couple of years from now when they could have included the successes and failures they encountered in their journey and had time to see what kind of changes it made in their individual and collective lives as well as the lives of those they intended to help. Would they have seen their contributions changing things so much that they continued to cut more and more of their lives in "half?"

Would they have found that just contributing money wasn't creating the change they wanted to see so they committed to giving more of their time and their hearts and talents through personal involvment? Would Hannah have agreed to leave the Atlanta Girls School and settle for a $10k/year school and provide a $10k/year scholarship to another girl so she could have the same privilege? Would the Salwen's forego a family vacation and give that money to the parents of a terminally ill child to take one last trip with that child?

I would love to have read something like this: "When we started on our journey we used to reward ourselves for serving others by going out to eat (this is in the book). Now we celebrate our ability to give and serve by inviting our newfound homeless friends out for a fine meal at our favorite restaurant (this is not in the book)." Oh, how I WISH this was in the book.

I approached "The Power of Half" thinking the author, or maybe his daughter, had some generous yet unrealistic expectations of what donating half the money from the sale of their house would do for the poor. But it was not an overnight deal. Kevin Salwen and his family spent more than a year poring through the possibilities, debating how to give and where it should go -- all the while going over the same things I questioned, like what if they are taken advantage of, what if the experiment failed, what it all the money just sinks into a deep, dark hole (like all the money from so many large organizations and countries have gone before)? Yes, they thought about it, and the whole process is explained -- how it started, what the family went through and the surprising transformation in the end.

Kevin Salwen is a journalist and his years of writing experience makes this book not only an interesting subject, but enjoyable and easy to read. His daughter writes excerpts in each chapter, which gives a teenager's perspective and some suggested activities to do with the family.

This is an inspirational book. The Salwen family has the courage to do something I would never do. Indeed, I thought they were nuts, but it is a lesson in humility. I applaud them.