Buying a Better World: George Soros and Billionaire Philanthropy

by Anna Porter

Overview

The incredible, inside story of the man and the organization changing the way we change the world.

George Soros is well known as the legendary speculator who made a fortune betting against the British pound in 1992, but he is also a philanthropist who has spent billions in order to promote democracy around the world. Morton Abramowitz of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace once said that Soros was “the only private citizen with his own foreign policy.”

Anna Porter has interviewed Soros, his senior staff, journalists, politicians, and many others in an attempt to understand the man. Each person has a unique story to tell. Focusing on the last decade, she explores how Soros’s Open Society Foundations have spread his ideas of human rights, democracy, Western liberalism, and participatory capitalism around the globe. These are the ideas Soros has said he considers worth dying for. How have they translated into reality? What will his legacy be?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781459731059
Publisher:	Dundurn Press
Publication date:	02/21/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	656 KB

About the Author

Anna Porter is the author of many books, including The Ghosts of Europe, Kasztner's Train, and The Storyteller. She has won many awards for her writing, including the Shaughnessey Cohen Prize for Political Writing, the Nereus Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Award, the Jewish Book Award for Non-Fiction, and the Canadian Authors Association/Birks Family Foundation Award for Biography. She is an Officer of the Order of Canada and also holds the Order of Ontario. She lives in Toronto.

Anna Porter is the author of many books, including The Ghosts of Europe, Kasztner’s Train, and The Storyteller. She has won many awards for her writing, including the Shaughnessey Cohen Prize for Political Writing, the Nereus Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Award, the Jewish Book Award for Non-Fiction, and the Canadian Authors Association/Birks Family Foundation Award for Biography. She is an Officer of the Order of Canada and also holds the Order of Ontario. She lives in Toronto.

Table of Contents

Introduction 9

The Man and his Ideas

1 The Messiah of Wall Street 19

2 The Difficulty of Being Jewish 31

3 The Ideas That Fuel the Man and His Foundations 39

The Open Society Foundations

4 Mr. Human Rights 49

5 The Hub in New York 64

6 The Legalist 78

In Eastern Europe

7 The Hungarian Experiment 85

8 Eastern Promises 94

9 The Failure in Russia 107

10 Meddling in the Balkans 117

11 The Struggles of the Roma 126

Spreading Across the World

12 African Expeditions 137

13 Myanmar: Another Test for Democracy 147

14 Tackling America 152

Soros and Global Issues

15 And Justice for All 165

16 The Politics of Public Health 175

17 The Challenges of Climate Change 181

18 Ending the War on Drugs 185

19 The Battle for the Soul of Europe 190

Epilogue 200

Acknowledgements 205

Notes 207

Selected Bibliography 213

Index 216

What People are Saying About This

Janice Gross Stein Munk School of Global Affairs

"[Buying a Better Worldis] a compelling portrait of a larger-than-life man who, even as he mirrors his times, stands apart and tries to reshape the world."

Michael Harris

"Anna Porter will always be a force whenever language takes centre stage. In her latest book, Buying a Better World, she spins a mesmerizing narrative of one of the most intriguing human beings of his time, billionaire philanthropist George Soros."

Thomas Keneally

"Anna Porter's Kasztner's Train takes us to the magnificently researched and reconstructed world of Hungary during the twin fascist terrors of the Arrow Cross and the SS - to a world in which everything is in flux except the determination of Kasztner. It will become a classic of the times it deals with."

Janice Gross Stein

"[Buying a Better World is] a compelling portrait of a larger-than-life man who, even as he mirrors his times, stands apart and tries to reshape the world."

Editorial Reviews

07/06/2015
George Soros built his financial empire trading in high-risk derivatives while giving away billions of dollars to scholars, human rights activists, nonprofit organizations, and educational institutions. Based on interviews with Soros and his friends, colleagues, and business partners, Porter (The Ghosts of Europe) writes an extraordinary biography of the billionaire, focusing on his legacy. She traces numerous activities of the Open Society Foundation, an international charitable organization founded by Soros "to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens." Branches of the foundation have emerged in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Africa, South East Asia, and the U.S., and Morton Abramowitz of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace dubbed Soros the "only private citizen with his own foreign policy." But Porter notes that Soros's belief that money can make a world a better place if you are able "to intervene at the right moment" is challenged by ongoing problems in the places where he has invested. She quotes the aphorism (often erroneously attributed to Churchill) that "Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm," but questions how many failures the foundation can sustain while still laying claim to making things better and how long it can survive. John Pearce, Westwood Creative Artists. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Porter explains the lens through which Soros looks at both economics and politics—the idea that there’s a two-way relationship between cause and effect.

Maclean's

"[The Ghosts of Europe] offers a succinct, highly readable, contemporary history, interspersed with interviews with influential national figures regarding past, present and future."

National Post - Philip Marchand