Foundations play an essential part in the philanthropic activity that defines so much of American life. No other nation provides its foundations with so much autonomy and freedom of action as does the United States. Liberated both from the daily discipline of the market and from direct control by government, American foundations understandably attract great attention. As David Hammack and Helmut Anheier note in this volume, "Americans have criticized foundations for... their alleged conservatism, liberalism, elitism, radicalism, devotion to religious tradition, hostility to religion—in short, for commitments to causes whose significance can be measured, in part, by the controversies they provoke. Americans have also criticized foundations for ineffectiveness and even foolishness." Their size alone conveys some sense of the significance of American foundations, whose assets amounted to over $530 billion in 2008 despite a dramatic decline of almost 22 percent in the previous year. And in 2008 foundation grants totaled over $45 billion. But what roles have foundations actually played over time, and what distinctive roles do they fill today? How have they shaped American society, how much difference do they make? What roles are foundations likely to play in the future? This comprehensive volume, the product of a three-year project supported by the Aspen Institute's program on the Nonprofit Sector and Philanthropy, provides the most thorough effort ever to assess the impact and significance of the nation's large foundations. In it, leading researchers explore how foundations have shaped—or failed to shape—each of the key fields of foundation work. American Foundations takes the reader on a wide-ranging tour, evaluating foundation efforts in education, scientific and medical research, health care, social welfare, international relations, arts and culture, religion, and social change.

Contains analyses that are designed to highlight specified subject areas or provide other significant presentations of budget data that place the budget in perspective. This volume includes economic and accounting analyses; information on Federal receipts and collections; analyses of Federal spending; detailed information on Federal borrowing and debt; baseline or current services estimates; and other technical presentations that provide the Budget message of the President of the United States, and information on the President's priorities with summary tables. American citizens, financial stakeholders, economists, and historians that are interested in very detailed receipts of the Federal Government's debt and collection, economic and accounting analyses will be most interested in this volume set forth by the President's economic agenda policy. Federal agency personnel, Federal Government auditing firms, Federal contractors, media organizations and financial professionals, especially accountants and business managers may have interest in this volume that provides an in-depth picture of Federal spending priorities and management of America's debt. Public and academic libraries will want to make this annual reference product available for the general public in their Government collections. Students studying Public Finance, political scientists, and researchers will appreciate this detailed information analysis and supporting data. The entire printed collection of Fiscal Year 2018 Budget book volumes can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/budget-economy/federal-budgets-year/fiscal-year-2018-budget

America's grantmaking foundations have grown rapidly over the course of recent decades, even in the face of financial and economic crises. Foundations have a great deal of freedom, enjoy widespread legitimacy, and wield considerable influence. In this book, David Hammack and Helmut Anheier follow up their edited volume, American Foundations, with a comprehensive historical account of what American foundations have done with that independence and power. While philanthropic foundations play important roles in other parts of the world, the U.S. sector stands out as exceptional. Nowhere else are they so numerous, prominent, or autonomous. What have been the main contributions of philanthropic foundations to American society? And what might the future hold for them? A Versatile American Institution considers foundations in a new way. Previous accounts typically focused narrowly on their organization, donors, and leaders, and their intentions—but not on the outcome of philanthropy. Rather than looking at foundations in a vacuum, Hammack and Anheier consider their roles and contributions in the context of their times and their economic and political circumstances.

In a comparative and interdisciplinary analysis of modern and postmodern literature, film, art, and visual culture, Monika Kaup examines the twentieth century's recovery of the baroque within a hemispheric framework embracing North America, Latin America, and U.S. Latino/a culture. As "neobaroque" comes to the forefront of New World studies, attention to transcultural dynamics is overturning the traditional scholarship that confined the baroque to a specific period, class, and ideology in the seventeenth century. Reflecting on the rich, nonlinear genealogy of baroque expression, Neobaroque in the Americas envisions the baroque as an anti-proprietary expression that brings together seemingly disparate writers and artists and contributes to the new studies in global modernity.

In American Foundations, Mark Dowie argues that organized philanthropy is on the verge of an evolutionary shift that will transform America's nearly 50,000 foundations from covert arbiters of knowledge and culture to overt mediators of public policy and aggressive creators of new orthodoxy. He questions the wisdom of placing so much power at the disposal of nondemocratic institutions. As American wealth expands, old foundations such as Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Pew, and MacArthur have grown exponentially, while newer trusts such as Mott, Johnson, Packard, Kellogg, Hughes, Annenberg, Hewlett, Duke, and Gates have surpassed them. Foundation assets now total close to $400 billion. Though this is a tiny sum compared to corporate and government treasuries, and foundation grants still total less than 10 percent of contributions made by individuals, foundations have power and influence far beyond their wealth. Their influence derives from the conditional nature of their grant making, their power from its leverage. Unlike previous historians of philanthropy who have focused primarily on the grant maker, Dowie examines foundations from the public's perspective. He focuses on eight key areas in which foundations operate: education, science, health, environment, food, energy, art, and human services. He also looks at their imagination, or lack thereof, and at the strained relationship between American foundations and American democracy. Dowie believes that foundations deserve to exist and that they can assume an increasingly vital role in American society, but only if they transform themselves from private to essentially public institutions. The reforms he proposes to make foundations more responsive to pressing social problems and more accountable to the public will almost certainly start an important national debate.

"From the bestselling author of Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge comes the dramatic conclusion of how conservatism took control of American political power"--

The Asian/Pacific area has become a crucial arena of great power rivalry. It is in this region that the interests and ambitions of the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, and the People's Republic of China most frequently intersect. At least partially in response to these realities, new or strengthened alignments or relationships-most of them tentative and not yet fully formed-are developing in the region. Among these developments are the Sino-American and Sino-Japanese rapprochements, growing unity within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and improved relations between ASEAN and China. Whether these developments will serve to ease significantly the heightened uncertainties, tensions, and strains in the region remains to be seen. For most of the nations of the Asian/Pacific region, the post--World War II decades have been a period of significant economic growth and progress toward the development of viable and stable political institutions. As diplomatic interactions have become ever more complex, and as trade relations among the various countries have expanded, both the economic vitality and the geopolitical importance of the region have gained increasing recognition. Careful consideration of these varied and complex concerns has led a number of observers to conclude that today's interna-tional environment requires greater emphasis on security-related matters in Asia and the Pacific Basin. Acting upon this conviction, the National Strategy Information Center and five cooperating organizations co-sponsored a conference on "New Foundations for Asian and Pacific Security" at Pattaya, Thailand in December 1979. This book contains the addresses, conference papers (some in slightly altered form), and committee reports that constituted the formal substantive aspects of the conference.

In this book, Professor Ramin Jahanbegloo elucidates the central concepts in the moral and political thought of Martin Luther King, Jr., bringing out the subtlety, potency, and universal importance of his concepts of Agape love and non-violence, the Beloved Community and revolution of values, and his view of the relation between justice and compassion in politics. King’s political philosophy integrates the ethical, the moral and the spiritual into a political way of being that is not only best suited for the American society, but also for any society in quest of an inclusive democracy. Jahanbegloo’s account of King’s moral and political philosophy demands those of us confronted by the challenges of today’s world to have a fresh look at the pragmatic and non-utopian thoughts of one of the prophetic voices of twentieth century.

For more than two generations, W. V. Quine has contributed fundamentally to the substance, the pedagogy, and the philosophy of mathematical logic. Selected Logic Papers, long out of print and now reissued with eight additional essays, includes much of the author's important work on mathematical logic and the philosophy of mathematics from the past sixty years.