The Browser
"Sundry guiftes, legacies, landes and Revennewes" These words come from the charter of the oldest corporation in America. And in the almost three and a half centuries since they were written, Harvard has become not only our oldest but also one of our la rgest corporations, with an endowment approaching $3 billion, with monthly cash flow of $1 billion, with stock holdings and financial clout to rival the most powerful institutional investors. The College in The Yard has gone multinational. GREAT GOOD FORTUNE
goes behind her venerable ivied walls to reveal an organization at the cutting edge of finance, run by an improbable, little-known but highly effective combination of old-school Brahmins and whiz-kid money managers. It takes a hard look at the moral and political dilemmas facing administrators who must decide whether to pay for academic freedom with the proceeds of apartheid. It examines the methods and mechanisms of Harvard's fund-raising— and many graduates will be astonished to discover just how much Harvard knows about them before the first appeal is sent, the first phone call made. GREAT GOOD FORTUNE
maps a unique financial empire, an enormous, complex, sometimes contradictory institution whose tremendous resources impose equally tremendous responsibilities. It tells a story that is enlightening, sometimes disturbing, always fascinating. Lee Iacocca, meet John Harvard. He can teach you a thing or two.
GREAT GOOD FORTUNE HOW HARVARD MAKES ITS MONEY
CARLA.VIGELAND -*>£" Houghton Mifflin Company -I 2 Park Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02108 © Houghton Mifflin Company 1986 184
HARVARD MAGAZINE
through it in the addictive fascination with which one reads almanacs or eats potato chips. I was happy to sec that Robert Nozick, professor of philosophy, bravely listed not only John Stuart Mill's On Liberty and Plato's The Republic but also the classic comics he read as a child. The profusion of listings indicates that President Eliot's dreams of variety at Harvard have indeed come true. Q
of a multimillion-dollar land swindle on the fragile islands off the Mississippi coast. Constance Seheerer, Ci '41-'42, Writing in Winter. BkMk Press, $5.25. Observant, spiritually rich book of poems—a first collection. Arthur R.G. Solmssen '49, Takeover Time. Little, Brown. $17.95. Senior lawyer Graham Anders gets involved with a radiant blonde and caught in a thicket of intrigue and suspense. Skip Wilson (Ruth Ann Wilson) '42. lid '60'61, This Is Jest for You, Ashley, $9.95. Quickwitted verse on life's quirks and constants.
Richard'Marias has directed Harvard's Ex- LITERARY CRITICISM pository Writing Program since 1978.
Books and Authors Recent publications M' and about Harvard alumni and faculty members.
FICTION AND POETRY Warren Bargad '61. and Stanley F. Chyet, editors and translators. Israeli Poetry: A Contemporary Anthology, Indiana. $29.95. Poems evoking national issues and personal experiences, heroism and loss, and the preeariousness of life during forty years of struggling statehood. Sophie Belfort (Kathcrinc H. Auspitz) '63, Ph.D. '71. ///,• I Mr Curtain Murders IA Romanre/, Athcncum. $14.95. The worlds of academe and local politics collide in a stylish thriller starring professor Molly Rafferty and police detective Nick I lannibal. Peter Benchley '61, "Q" Clearance. Random House, $16.95. High comedy about a presidential speech writer thrust into prominence as a trusted adviser and espionage victim. Clarenee Brown, Ph.D. '62. editor and translator, i'iie Xuise of lime: The Prose of Osip Mandelsla/n. North Point. $12.50. A reminiscence, short story, memoir, travel journal, and ourraged protest by the preeminent Russian poet testify to the triumph of art over the forces of oppression. Maureen Howard, 1ST '67-'6b\ Expensive Hubits. Summit, $17.95. On the eve of a by-pass opctation, best-selling novelist Margaret Flood decides to write the :nith about her life. Pcrri Klass '78. M.D. '86, / Am Hating An Adventure, Putnam's. $17.95. Twenty short stories on modern living include two O. Henry .-Ward winners. Kathryn Lasky Knight, l)v '67-'68. Trace Elrments, Norton. $15.95, Hie mysterious murder of a young Harvard scientist is solved by his charming widow. John D. MaeDonald, M B A . '39, Barrier Island. Knopf, $16.95. Densely populated story
John Hannay '71. The htertextuality of hale: A Study of Margate! Drabble, Missouri, $7.95. The tragic romance, the return to origin, and the providential model in Drabblc's fiction arc seen here as evocations of the idea of "fate." Paul J. Korshin, Ph.D. '66, editor. Johnson After law Hundred Years, Pennsylvania. $35. Rcevaluation of Samuel Johnson's life and intellectual development within the context of his time. John I.. Mahoney, Ph.D. 57, The Whole Internal I 'niverse: Imitation and the NtW Defense of Poetry in British Criticism, 1660-ltiJO, Fordham, $25 (paper, $10). Essays on important episodes in the evolution of the term "imitation," from its classical origins to its full flowering with the English Romantics.
ARTS AND LETTERS Michael Dennis, professor of architecture. Court and Gan/en: From the French Hotel to the Cm of Modern Architecture. M.I.T., $40. The social, psychological, and formal transformations that led architects to trade the city of public space for a city of private "icons." Robert Finch '65. Out/amis: Journeys to the Outer Edges of Cape Cod. (iodine, $15.95. New cssavs from the naturalist-writer speculate generously on man's place in the natural world. Donald Hall '51, Gj '54-'57. Fathers I'taw^ Catch With Sons: Essays on Sport (Mostly Baseball). North Point. $13.5(1. Observation, reportage, and reminiscence from a sports-loving poet. Inez Hedges '68, languages of Revolt: Dada and Surrealist Literature and Film. Duke, $25. A compelling topic interpreted through the focal principles of alchemy, frame making, and metaphor. John Hcjduk. M A R . '53, Mash of Medusa. Ri/y.oli, $35. Cooper Union's dean of architecture offers a guide to his designs and projects and comments on architecture's relationship to social and political currents. Michael Kiernuii, Ph.D. '71. editor TheEssayes or Counsels, Chill and Moral! Harvard. $30. First critical edition in a century of these essays by Sir Francis Bacon employs modern editorial standards to establish an authentic text. Christopher Maurer, associate professor of Romance languages and literatures, translator, hi the Green Morning: Memories of Federico. by Francisco Garcia Lorca, New Directions, $23.50 (paper, $12.95). Vivid memoir of the Lorca