Customer Reviews

What Makes Charity Work?: A Century of Public and Private Philanthropy

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"What Makes Charity Work?" is an excellent treatment of the subject of private charity from a libertarian/classic liberal perspective. Opening with compelling stories of private charitable work in the turn of the century northeast United States (mostly New York), the editor draws the reader in and keeps his or her interest all the way through the more intellectual and theoretical essays. As a Christian missionary and a Libertarian, I heartily recommend this book to those looking for an alternative to the dehumanizing government welfare programs. I would encourage readers as well to act on this information, and help out such private charities either through volunteerism or through financial donations, or both!

This collection of essays from the magazine "City Journal" examines the many approaches to public charitable works taken in the US over the last 150 years, and shows which ones were effective in helping the needy.

More importantly, it explains why the good ones worked and why the bad ones didn't -- and don't, even today.

The insights here are devastating to anyone who believes we need to give more money to existing welfare and charity programs, and profoundly empowering to anyone interested in finding approaches that will actually work, because they actually have.

(I am not an historian, so I am trusting that the authors are not flat-out lying. If they are, please write a book debunking them. If they aren't, then we should immediately change our entire approach to public charity in the US.)