Giving

Customer Reviews

• Bill Clinton: a Late Comer to Giving  Sep 11, 2007 (117 of 216 found this helpful)

  About at week ago a book came out under the title Giving: How each of us can change the world. The author on the cover: Bill Clinton.
  
  The book description starts off by telling us that Giving is an inspiring look at how each of us can change the world. First, it reveals the extraordinary and innovative efforts now being made by companies and organizations--and by individuals--to solve problems and save lives both "down the street and around the world." Then it urges us to seek out what each of us, "regardless of income, available time, age, and skills," can do to help, to give people a chance to live out their dreams.
  
  And the description continues to emphasize that "Bill Clinton shares his own experiences" and those of other givers, representing a global flood tide of nongovernmental, nonprofit activity. These remarkable stories demonstrate that gifts of time, skills, things, and ideas are as important and effective as contributions of money. From Bill and Melinda Gates to a six-year-old California girl named McKenzie Steiner, who organized and supervised drives to clean up the beach in her community, Clinton introduces us to both well-known and unknown heroes of giving.
  
  Question is how much of this is new? Did anyone not know about Bill Gates and Melinda Gates Foundation, Warren Buffet, Agassi, Ophrah etc? Are those really the "great examples" of givers? So many people in this country have helped others, here or abroad, from early age on, offered their skills, time or part of their income to contribute to the poor, before they accumulated any wealth. It is not the stars of the media that are the biggest contributors, it is all the other "givers" that together have had more impact over many more years that should have been highlighted. After all if you first have to accumulate a few billions (or millions) before you start consider "giving", there is something fundamentally wrong with your understanding of the world we are living in.
  
  Actually, Bill Clinton's book is one that anyone with a small research staff and a couple of excellent editors could have written. The content is a long laundry list of people, organizations and government programs that have been "giving" money, time, and/or skills; all of this data could easily have been assembled by some research assistants or even by any of you who know how productive one can become with Google. Granted it is all put together in an easy readable format but that does not leave out the possibility that a couple of excellent editors produced the bulk of it.
  
  In between this jungle of often unrelated data -- e.g. Benjamin Franklin's organization of firefighting -- are the personal notes of Bill Clinton e.g. how his wife was much more geared to helping the poor while she was in college than he was; how Al Gore gave Bill weekly (for eight years) a lecture about the environment, the fight on climate control (and now he finally got it?), etc.
  
  The biggest problem with Clinton's assertions especially about all "the millions of people that have been affected when he was in office", is that he confuses cause and effect! Just because some things happen on "a certain watch", it does not imply that they were necessary the effect of deliberate programs. In the literatue one distinguishes between program outputs, effects and impact; Bill Clinton should know this, since it was USAIDs who came up with "the logical framework" in the 70's.
  
  In the chapter about Government's contributions in "Giving" there is no mention how poverty evolved during the eight years that Bill was in the office; nor are there any references to contributions made by international organizations such as the World Bank, W.H.O., UNICEF; nor does Bill write about the current administrations contributions to HIV/AIDS relative to his own foundations. Dr Paul Farmer's work in the field on this came long before Bill Clinton "discovered" i

• Bill Clinton at his best  Sep 4, 2007 (105 of 123 found this helpful)

  Even conservatives will like this book. It's interesting, inspiring, clearly written, not at all political and, believe it or not, only a tad self-centered. Filled with dozens, maybe hundreds, of specific examples of charitable individuals and successful grassroots programs, it argues -- in fact, proves -- that you don't have to be a big shot to make the world a better place. Clinton clearly believes in what he writes; the book is passionate and powerful on topics that, in other hands, would be detached and dull.
  
  Besides the subject matter, what I liked best about the book is its organization. Written so you don't have to read it all at once, it breaks down philanthropy into six different categories, and gives each its own chapter. Those are:
  
  * Giving time
  * Giving things
  * Giving skills
  * Giving "gifts of reconciliation and new beginnings" (citing everything from the efforts of Nelson Mandela to PeacePlayers International, a group that sets up basketball leagues in the Middle East)
  * Giving gifts that keep on giving (such as the work of Heifer International, which gives millions of poor farmers free cows -- as long as they agree to donate one its first offspring to someone else)
  * Giving to good ideas
  
  Clinton also includes descriptions of some successful charitable programs that are easy to use as model strategies for your own ideas, illustrates how businesses can make money out of acting in the public interest, and explains his views on what roles governments (not just Washington, but cities and states) can play.
  
  In the last chapter, titled "How Much Should You Give and Why," he argues that if the rich would donate five percent of their incomes to humanitarian causes, the rest of society would give even more, and that one reason to be generous and public spirited is simply that it makes you feel good. "Who's happier?" he writes. "The uniters or the dividers? The builders or the breakers? The givers or the takers? I think you know the answer."
  
  Regardless of your political views, if you're a charitable person and seriously want to make a difference in the world, this is a must-read. You'll come away from it not only inspired, but with plenty of ideas on how to accomplish your goals.

• Here we go again  Sep 13, 2007 (101 of 150 found this helpful)

  I read most of the book today, but finally had to out it down. This is so poorly written and is about as interesting as a telephone. If your are going to write a book, Mr. Bill Clinton, will you for goodness sakes put some effort into it? I agree with the points made above so I won't go into all of the issues I have with this tome. Reading this thing is a complete waste of time. I want my money back.

• Can't wait  Sep 8, 2007 (74 of 177 found this helpful)

  I can't wait to read this title. It's on my list right after:
  1.PRESERVING OUR CONSTITUTION BY RUTH BADER GUINSBURG
  2.SWIMMING MADE EASY BY SENATOR TED KENNEDY

• Chicken Soup for an ex-president's soul?  Oct 1, 2007 (70 of 83 found this helpful)

  Does anyone really need an entire book just to tell them that the world would be a better place if we all helped each other out?
  
  I was looking for some world-changing ideas here, but this book reads like a long ghost-written feel-good press release and while the "giving" sentiment is a good one, I think the Bible already covered "do unto others" quite nicely.
  
  I suppose an author can't very well go on a worldwide book tour without having a book first, so this one was obviously quickly produced as an excuse to hit the talk show circuit.
  
  But most people will be able to grasp the book's entire message just from hearing interviews about the book and seeing the title. Actually reading the book is unnecessary.