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Charity Starts with Making Piles of Money.

The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune by Conor O'Clery

The story of Chuck Feeney intrigued me. What would drive someone to build a billion dollar business, and then work feverishly to unbuild its wealth?

When I first started reading this, the narrative moved so quickly and had so many details, that I thought the second half of the book would be non-stop analysis. It turns out, however, that the author was suck a journalist, that he couldn't help but keep the pace up. Curiously, he didn't create a strong meta-narrative. That Feeney did this is clear, but exactly why isn't. (Good, because Feeney himself doesn't make it crystal clear.) Like Carnegie, he reached the pinnacle of wealth and then blinked. Or did he? Feeney set out to prove that the compassionate use of wealth is its right end.

Lesson learned: you can do a whole lot of good by taking an entrepreneurial approach to philanthropy. Lesson yet to learn: do I have the wisdom to avoid the entrapment of wealth?