David C. Hammack’s histories of cities and of nonprofit organizations aim to show how the past has shaped important aspects of the present, both good and bad. Now Haydn Professor of History at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, he studied at Harvard, Columbia, and Reed, worked in building construction and a frozen food warehouse, and taught in high schools. He has served on the faculties of Princeton, the City U. of NY, and the U. of Houston, and has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Visiting Fellow at Yale’s Program on Non-Profit Organizations. In 2012 he won the Assn for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action’s award for distinguished achievement; at CWRU he won the Diekhoff Award for Distinguished Graduate Teaching.

Hammack’s newest book is a concise history: A VERSATILE AMERICAN INSTITUTION: THE CHANGING IDEALS AND REALITIES OF PHILANTHROPIC FOUNDATIONS (with Helmut Anheier). AMERICAN FOUNDATIONS: STUDIES ON ROLES AND CONTRIBUTIONS (with Anheier) has 18 chapters on foundations in nine distinct fields from K-12 education to Medicine to the Arts. SOCIAL SCIENCE IN THE MAKING: ESSAYS ON THE RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION (with Stanton Wheeler), came in 1994.

The extensive introductions and classic short texts of MAKING THE NONPROFIT SECTOR IN THE UNITED STATES: A READER (1998) have won wide acceptance. NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS IN A MARKET ECONOMY (with Dennis R. Young, 1993), helped consolidate research on nonprofit economics. GLOBALIZATION, PHILANTHROPY, AND CIVIL SOCIETY: PROJECTING INSTITUTIONAL LOGICS ABROAD, (with Steven Heydemann of the U.S. Institute for Peace, 2009) explores environmental affairs, conflict-resolution, and social entrepreneurship.

David Hammack’s studies of urban history include POWER AND SOCIETY: GREATER NEW YORK AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY (nominated for a Pulitzer Prize), and CLEVELAND FROM STARTUP TO THE PRESENT: INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP, (with Michael Fogarty and Gaspar Garofalo), at http://www.generationfoundation.org/. His comparisons of U.S. with European cities and nonprofits are included in Bender and Schorske’s BUDAPEST & NEW YORK: STUDIES IN METROPOLITAN TRANSFORMATION, in Adam’s PHILANTHROPY, PATRONAGE, AND CIVIL SOCIETY: EXPERIENCES FROM GERMANY, GREAT BRITAIN, AND NORTH AMERICA, and in NONPROFIT AND VOLUNTARY SECTOR QUARTERLY, 2001.