cover image Golden Donors

Golden Donors

Waldemar A. Nielsen. Dutton Books, $25 (468pp) ISBN 978-0-525-24366-3

Nielsen, who wrote The Big Foundations in 1972, here updates his study of America's 36 largest organized philanthropies. Although the project was funded in part by the MacArthur Foundation, the author has succeeded in remaining objective, for his chapter on the feuding within that organization is the liveliest in the book. Overall, however, his examination of foundations with assets in excess of $250 million is bland; for example, he plays down the much-publicized criticism that the McGeorge Bundy regime caused fiscal damage to the Ford Foundation. Nielsen does fault all these organizations for inattention to problems of war and peace, to the decreasing productivity of U.S. industry and to an ""underperforming'' U.S. welfare state. Still, his report is unlikely to garner a wide audience. November 26