BUYING A BETTER WORLD.

While this is not the first book on George Soros, it is arguably the first to look critically (though not necessarily unsympathetically) at his empire and assess whether the billions he has poured into social and political causes have been used to good effect.

George Soros is the legendary philanthropist who has spent billions over several decades in an attempt to change the world. Morton Abromowitz of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace once said that Soros was “the only private citizen with his own foreign policy.” But should one man have that kind of power? What were his aims? How successful has he been? What will be his legacy? As a speculator, the Hungarian-born Soros rocked governments and toppled currencies while creating phenomenal earnings for his hedge-fund. As a philanthropist, his empire encompasses every continent – he has foundations in more than 100 countries and has spent around US$12-billion on social and political causes since 1985. But unlike the Ford Foundation or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Soros has been a social activist with very specific ideas on how to change the world and the way people think. He founded the Open Society Institute in 1993, the year after he made a fortune gambling against the pound sterling. Its aims were nothing less than reforming societies and shaping public policy to reflect the values of liberal democracies. Money was not a concern for him: ideas were. During the past few years, his main preoccupations have been saving the European Union and ending the ‘war on drugs.' He has exhorted governments, written books, and given interviews. Have these efforts been successful? In her attempt to understand Soros, Anna Porter has interviewed the man himself and many of his key lieutenants; met former dissidents, students, politicians, journalists, economists, businessmen, and academics; talked to his supporters and detractors. Each has a unique and revelatory story to tell. Focusing particularly on the last decade, she explores how the Open Society behemoth has spread its ideas of human rights, democracy, Western liberalism and participatory capitalism. These are the ideas Soros has said he considers worth dying for. How have they translated into reality? Indeed, have they? Soros is now 84 years old. He has been in feverish overdrive since his 70th birthday, wishing to accomplish what he set out to do thirty years ago: inspire people to embrace ‘open society.' Anna Porter takes the long view in assessing his empire and his current preoccupations. She measures what he has set out to achieve and how the world will remember him. ANNA PORTER was for 20 years the publisher of Key Porter Books in Canada. Her previous non-fiction books are The Storyteller, a memoir about her grandfather and her early years in Hungary; the much acclaimed Kasztner's Train, the true story of Reszo Kasztner, who rescued thousands of Jews from German-occupied territory in 1944/1945; and The Ghosts Of Europe, a contemporary report on Central Europe. Kasztner's Train was the winner of the Nereus Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Award as well as the Jewish Book Award for Non-Fiction. The Ghosts of Europe won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for excellence in politicial writing.