SOROS--BOOK REVIEW

SOROS BY MICHAEL T.KAUFMAN ; PUBLISHED BYALFRED.A.KNOPF ; PAGES -344; PRICE U.S $ 27.50
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Michael Kaufman spent forty years with New York Times in several capacities. He had predicted the collapse of communism in Poland in his book-“Mad Dreams ,Saving Graces”. He bagged the George Polk Award for foreign reporting as also a Guggenheim fellowship.
The book under review is the first biography of George Soros which was written with his collaboration. Soros, global financier and philanthropist is the founder and chairman of a network of foundations that promote, among other things, the creation of open, democratic societies based upon the rule of law, market economies, transparent and accountable governance, freedom of the press, and respect for human rights.
We follow Soros from his European dislocation to monumental success and phenomenal wealth. He was born a Jew in Budapest, Hungary, in 1930. His father was taken prisoner during World War I and eventually fled from captivity in Russia to reunite with his family in Budapest. Soros was thirteen years old when Hitler's Wehrmacht seized Hungary and began deporting the country's Jews to extermination camps. In 1946, as the Soviet Union was taking control of the country, Soros attended a conference in the West and defected. He emigrated in 1947 to England, supported himself by working as a railroad porter and a restaurant waiter, graduated in 1952 from the London School of Economics, and obtained an entry-level position with an investment bank. Ambition and opportunity drove him to the Mecca of capitalism—Wall Street where he adopted novel approaches and soon acquired the sobriquet,”The greatest money manager in the world ”. He established Quantum Fund which laid down the standards for hedge funds. The book is a fascinating account of how in a short period Soros accumulated wealth.
At the London School of Economics, Soros became acquainted with the work of the philosopher Karl Popper, whose ideas on open society had a profound influence on his intellectual development. Karl Popper in his monumental The Open Society and Its Enemies, maintained that societies can flourish only when they allow democratic governance, freedom of expression, a diverse range of opinion, and respect for individual rights.
Soros adapted Popper's ideas to develop his own theory of reflexivity," a set of ideas that explains the relationship between thought and reality, which he used to predict, among other things, the emergence of financial bubbles. Soros began to apply his theory to investing and concluded that he had more talent for trading than for philosophy. In 1967 he helped establish an offshore investment fund; and in 1973 he set up a private investment firm that eventually evolved into the Quantum Fund, one of the first hedge funds, through which he accumulated a vast fortune.
As his financial success mounted, Soros applied his wealth to philanthropic activities. He provided funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa. This was followed by a foundation in Hungary to support culture and education and help the country’s transition to democracy. Soros also distributed funds to the underground Solidarity movement in Poland, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet physicist-dissident Andrei Sakharov. In 1982, Soros named his philanthropic organization the Open Society Fund, in honour of Karl Popper, and began granting scholarships to students from Eastern Europe.
The magnitude and geographical scope of his philanthropic commitments, coupled with the core principle of fostering open societies, has allowed Soros to transcend the limitations of many national governments and international institutions. Soros spent $50 million to help the citizens of Sarajevo endure the city’s siege during the Bosnian war, funding among other projects a water-filtration plant that allowed residents to avoid having to draw water from distribution points targeted by Serb snipers. Most recently, he has provided $50 million to support the Millennium Villages initiative, which seeks to lift some of the least developed villages in Africa out of poverty.
His network of philanthropic organizations dedicated to building open societies has expanded to include more than 60 countries in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and Latin America.


Through his projects he became a key figure in the collapse of communism. The story of his philanthropy is as fascinating as that of his financial rise.
We have intimate portraits of Soros and his family.He would abruptly turn away from some pending multi-million dollar venture to address complex problems in his philanthropic foundations and then switch back to money matters shifting gears, without dropping a beat, a decimal place, or any hint of emotion. When he was asked what accounted for his extraordinary record, he claimed that self-criticism was the decisive factor. He would discover his mistakes swiftly and correct them before they caused too much harm.
If a fully involved life was to be measured by its mixture of ideas and action, then Soros would become the most broadly and deeply engaged citizen of the world.
Soros published several books and contributed essays on politics, society, and economics to major periodicals around the world. The book under review is an eye-opener to the making of a citizen of the world and offers hints on how to develop one’s personality and talents even as one acquires financial expertise.
P.P.Ramachandran