What's Love Got to Do With It?: A Critical Look at American Charity

by David Wagner

Now available in paperback, What's Love Got to Do with It? is an insightful debunking of the way charitable giving disguises American neglect of the public welfare. Award-winning Professor of Social Work and Sociology David Wagner points out that while the United States prides itself on being one of the most generous nations, it provides its citizens with the lowest public benefits of any Western society and has rates of poverty and inequality among the highest in the industrialized world. These two facts, Wagner argues, are not unrelated: independent philanthropy actually provides a cover for the harshness of America's free-market capitalism.In a book that Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, says raises sobering questions for all of us who want to live in a just society, Wagner offers a provocative contribution to our thinking on philanthropy and social welfare.

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

David Wagner, Ph.D., MSW

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it for school and actually liked it quite a bit. It is a very cynical way to look at social welfare.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in my Social Welfare class with Prof. Irma Watkins-Owens. It highly informed my understanding of American charity organizations and America's guilt-tripped population of uninformed, tax-exempt, "givers". It turns out America is more than willing to blindly feed into corporate-bound, ineffectively bureaucratic, and out-right greedy aid foundations.

[L · Rating 4 out of 5]

gave me a lot of food for thought!