The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781476765877)

From Pulitzer Prize finalist John Fabian Witt comes a captivating secret history of the Garland Fund, which shaped the course of American history by financing wildly innovative struggles for economic, racial, and democratic liberation.

In 1922, Charles Garland, a young idealist, rejected a million-dollar inheritance, opting instead to invest in a future where radical ideas like economic equality and social justice could flourish. Over the next two decades, the Garland Fund, though dwarfed by the charitable foundations of industrial titans like Carnegie and Rockefeller, would become a crucible for progressive thought.

The men and women of the Garland Fund cooperated and they bickered, they competed and (at least once) formed romantic connections. Shared beliefs, however, linked them throughout. They believed that American capitalism was broken. They believed that American democracy, if it had ever existed, disserved those who had the least. And they believed that American institutions needed to be radically remade for the modern age.

By the time they exhausted the Fund's resources, they had succeeded in turning their once radical ideas--ideas like free speech, working class empowerment, and desegregation--into guiding principles for American life.

The Radical Fund is not just a historical account; it is a testament to the power of visionary organizations, a meditation on the vexed role of money in an age of robber barons and vast fortunes, and a hopeful book for anxious times. Witt's sweeping, luminous narrative provides a road map for how people with heretical ideas can bring about audacious change.

Author: John Fabian Witt
ISBN-10: 1476765871
ISBN-13: 9781476765877
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Language: English
Published: 10/14/2025
Pages: 656
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.44lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.15d