Philanthropy in Democratic Societies - New book and excerpt

I'm delighted to have co-edited this new volume, Philanthropy in Democratic Societies. The book is a product of an unusual process, one of workshops and seminars designed to create an multi-author  volume that forms a more coherent whole than most such collections.

The blog HistPhil is running a series of pieces by each of the volume's contributing authors. My chapter uses the development of the Digital Public Library of America as a case study of philanthropy and nonprofits seeking to fill the liminal space between markets and governments. This role is not new. But filling such space when the resources to be managed are digital, the founding leaders are disbursed, and the ideal of the decentralized internet holds strong as a governing metaphor is not only the DPLA's story but a model of enterprises yet to come.

My contribution to the HistPhil series can be found here. The book is available here. If you are in the Bay Area, please join several of the book's contributors and me for a book launch at Stanford on October 27. Information is here.