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American philanthropy today expands knowledge, champions social movements, defines active citizenship, influences policymaking, and addresses humanitarian crises. How did philanthropy become such a powerful and integral force in American society? Philanthropy in America is the first book to explore in depth the twentieth-century growth of this unique phenomenon. Ranging from the influential large-scale foundations established by tycoons such as John D. Rockefeller, Sr., and the mass mobilization of small donors by the Red Cross and March of Dimes, to the recent social advocacy of individuals like Bill Gates and George Soros, respected historian Olivier Zunz chronicles the tight connections between private giving and public affairs, and shows how this union has enlarged democracy and shaped history.Demonstrating that America has cultivated and relied on philanthropy more than any other country, Philanthropy in America examines how giving for the betterment of all became embedded in the fabric of the nation's civic democracy

"Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)-who was born in the shadow of the French Revolution and died a few years before the American Civil War-witnessed a remarkable era in the history of the West. His aristocratic family survived the revolutionary period, though many branches were cut down during the Terror, and Alexis grew up with a keen understanding that one world was ending and a new one was being born. Adventurous and curious, he traveled extensively in North America as a young man. There, he trained his observant eyes on his official duties-documenting conditions in the prison system-but became fascinated with America's experiments in democracy. Tocqueville was an avid political theorist, and he recorded his impressions in Democracy in America, still read to this day and considered one of the most provocative and insightful commentaries on the American experience. Tocqueville remained both an intellectual and an active politician for the majority of his life. He watched the revolutions take hold in 1848 across Europe, and he died in 1859, after penning his other famous work, The Old Regime and the Revolution. In this book, Olivier Zunz aims to convey how the world in which Tocqueville lived became his laboratory for political theory. Without downplaying Tocqueville's anxieties about the future, or about democracy's potential pathologies, Zunz places dedication to achieving a new kind of democracy at the center of his subject's life and work. He takes seriously Tocqueville's attempts to apply the lessons of his texts to French politics, and, throughout, he looks to Tocqueville's political career and activism as a guide to the meaning of his major texts. Drawing on his unparalleled familiarity with Tocqueville's own words and letters, Zunz offers a definitive biography of a remarkable thinker whose life formed a ligature between the ancien régime and the emerging democratic age"--

Contents -- Contributors -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Social Contracts Under Stress / Olivier Zunz -- Part I. National Paths to Middle-Class Formation -- Chapter 1. From Divergence to Convergence: The Divided German Middle Class, 1945 to 2000 / Hannes Siegrist -- Chapter 2. Individuality and Class: The Rise and Fall of the Gentlemanly Social Contract in Britain / Mike Savage -- Chapter 3. The Middle Classes in France: Social and Political Functions of Semantic Pluralism from 1870 to 2000 / Christophe Charle

Qu'entend-on par « pluralisme » aux États-Unis ? Compris dans son acception la plus large, le pluralisme est une idéologie de la différence. Être pluraliste, c'est concevoir l'univers comme fracturé et nier l'existence d'une seule vérité ; c'est favoriser les parties aux dépens du tout. Ainsi défini, le pluralisme est devenu une des idées-forces du XXe siècle américain, en fait un second nom pour libéralisme. Au-delà de ces généralités, deux conceptions du pluralisme qui correspondent à deux projets distincts s'affrontent dans les Etats-Unis d'aujourd'hui. La première, fondée sur le politique et l'économique, voit dans le pluralisme un libéralisme de « groupes d'intérêts » et vise à assurer la répartition équitable du pouvoir.