Charles R. Crane

About the Book

Heir to a Chicago plumbing company fortune, he lived a life so adventurous that he was the prototype for characters in at least three thrillers. Seldom seen on the public stage, he changed the course of history: once when he intervened with his friend Woodrow Wilson on behalf of another friend, Thomas G. Masaryk, to create a new nation, Czechoslovakia, and again when he sent a geologist to his friend Ibn Saud to prospect the Arabian sands for oil. Mostly, though, he was a man who used his money to help those in whom he believed. Wherever he was, in Bokhara or Baghdad, in the deserts or in the cities, Charles R. Crane carried with him a little black notebook. He would jot down the name of someone whose dream had impressed him — an artist, a would-be statesman, a rescuer of children trapped in Russia´s Civil War, an explorer — and an unexpected check would arrive weeks or months later to help that dream toward reality. In his later years Crane created a foundation, the Institute of Current World Affairs, which for seventy-five years has been carrying on his work of helping promising individuals to make the most of what is in them. Today, when fortunes of record size are being made in record numbers, Crane´s story tells us how one man of vision used his wealth to help make real the visions of others.

About the Author

David Hapgood was a Fellow in West Africa of the Crane-endowed Institute of Current World Affairs. He was a writer-editor for the New York Times, and an evaluator for the Peace Corps. He is the author of Africa from Independence to Tomorrow, The Screwing of the Average Man, and Year of the Pearl; and co-author of No Easy Harvest, The Murder of Napoleon, and Monte Cassino. He translated Camus' The First Man. He lives in New York City with his wife Janice.