Jim Rouse: Capitalist/Idealist - Softcover

Marx, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0761839445 ISBN 13: 9780761839446

Publisher: University Press of America, 2007

Synopsis

Jim Rouse: Capitalist/Idealist is the story of a very special businessman. A successful capitalist? a real estate developer? Jim Rouse led his life as a practicing idealist. He sought to help people enrich their lives. He wanted people to live in an enjoyable environment and to experience the joy in caring for each other. But he knew that to raise the capital to accomplish those goals his companies had to be profitable.

As an enthusiast of urban renewal, he worked to rid core downtown areas of American cities of blight and despair. He created indoor malls in the new post-war suburbs that would be focal points for community life. He developed a whole new city? Columbia, Maryland? to show what an American city could be like. For one thing, it would be a city totally integrated racially, a city in which anyone could buy or rent on any street. In retirement, Rouse founded the Enterprise Foundation to produce profits that would be used to provide the poorest of Americans with a decent place to live. Rouse was one of America's first practitioners of social enterprise.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Marx is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of New Haven. He is the author of The Modern Rules of Style (American Bar Association Publishing, 2007) and Utopia in America (Burke Publishing, 2002). He is the editor of Modern and Classical Essayists (McGraw-Hill, 1996) and Twelve Short Story Writers (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970). As a freelance writer, he has had articles in, among other journals, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The Baltimore Sun.

Review

Jim Rouse and Warren Buffett knew and had the highest respect for each other. They were aware of each other as men driven by a strong zest for life. Rouse, though, focused on “the improvement of mankind.” Buffett focused on financial returns for investors; Rouse produced houses and neighborhoods, villages and shops, woods and lakes. Except to the extent that it could limit his good works, Rouse did not care about financial returns. His worry was solvency, not increasing profitability. He had an abhorrence of selfishness.

Readers of Paul Marx's engaging and insightful biography of Jim Rouse―and there should be many―will be caught up in the story of Rouse's remarkable ability to make the ideal seem compelling and realistic. (C. Fraser Smith, columnist Baltimore Sun)

This book gets into the mind of Jim Rouse. It reveals how Rouse thought and what influenced him as he went about creating places that would bring out the best in people. (Robert Tennenbaum, editor of Creating a New City: Columbia, Maryland)

Edition details

• Publisher: University Press of America
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0761839445
• ISBN 13: 9780761839446
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 264