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The Cathedral Within: Transforming Your Life by Giving Something Back
enlarge	Author: Bill Shore Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Category: Book List Price: ~~$14.95~~ Buy Used: $1.45 You Save: $13.50 (90%) New (39) Used (42) from $1.45 Media: Paperback Number Of Items: 1 Pages: 320 Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6 Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 0.7 ISBN: 0375758291 Dewey Decimal Number: 362.7092273 EAN: 9780375758294 ASIN: 0375758291 Publication Date: November 13, 2001 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Shipping: Expedited shipping available Shipping: International shipping available Condition: Standard used condition.

Editorial Reviews: Amazon.com Review IThe Cathedral Within/I uses the metaphor of architecture to look at the way individuals allocate their resources to improve public life. Just as the enduring magnificence of a cathedral is not erected overnight, so, too, the transformation of a society takes many, many years to complete. And just as the construction of a cathedral is less a reflection of its builders' interest in masonry than a testament to the soaring reach of the human spirit, philanthropy is not so much a response to need as to a basic human requirement to give something meaningful back to society.p Bill Shore is the founder of Share Our Strength, a national nonprofit devoted to raising funds for antihunger and antipoverty organizations worldwide, and his book showcases the stories of some of the social entrepreneurs he has come across in the course of his work. Among his chosen visionaries are Alan Khazei, the cofounder of City Year, the community-service program upon which Bill Clinton drew for his own model of a national service, and Geoffrey Canada, the president and CEO of the Rheedlen Centers, designed to provide a safe haven for inner-city children. These leaders and many others, Shore argues, represent a kind of symbiosis between the need to improve oneself personally and the drive to transform the community. IThe Cathedral Within/I also contains an excellent resource directory of community organizations where readers can begin their own process of giving back. I--Patrizia DiLucchio/I Product Description In this wise and inspiring book, social entrepreneur Bill Shore shows us how to make the most of life and do something that counts. Like the cathedral builders of an earlier time, the visionaries described in this memoir share a single desire: to create something that endures. The extraordinary people Shore has met on his travels represent a new movement of citizens who are tapping into the vast resources of the private sector to improve public life. Among them are:brbr-- Gary Mulhair, who has created unprecedented jobs and wealth at the largest self-supporting human-service organization of its kind, Pioneer Human Services of Seattle.brbr-- Nancy Carstedt of the Chicago Childrenis Choir, which provides thousands of children their first introduction to music.brbr-- Geoffrey Canada, who has made a safe haven for more than four thousand inner-city children in New York City, from Hell's Kitchen to Harlem.brbrThese leaders, and many others described in these pages, have built important new cathedrals within their communities, and by doing so they have transformed lives, including their own.

Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews... The Cathedral Within February 22, 2006 1 out of 4 found this review helpful At first I thought the book was too preachy, but forged on and found it lively and rewarding, especially the examples of entreprenurial approaches to building nonprofit organizations and foundations. spectacularly vacuous March 6, 2004 21 out of 32 found this review helpful The actual content of the book can be summarized thusly: (1) spend more time with kids if you want to affect their development, (2) don't starve young children because otherwise they won't develop properly physically and mentally, (3) run your not-for-profit enterprise just like a for-profit corporation and with just as much of a zeal for profits, except that you can put the profits into your own pocket as salary instead of paying it out to a bunch of shareholders and to the Federales as income tax.pPadding these ideas out to 300 pages requires that the author tell you how famous his friends are, each and every one of them, and how much do-gooding his few non-famous friends have done. There are also long stories about the escapades of his 13-year-old son.pNever does the author address the issues raised in the subtitle, e.g., how does a person balance his or her life between charity and selfishness? Shore's definition of giving something back is working at a multi-million dollar tax-exempt organization and paying yourself $400,000 per year. Nice work if you can get it but what about the rest of us?pFor a thoughtful look at the issue of personal charity read the novelist Nick Hornby's How to be Good. Right on the mark May 6, 2002 6 out of 7 found this review helpful This is a book that touches the heart of both important social issues and the reader. Written in a wonderfully open style the author writes from a perspective of sharing rather than preaching. Bill Shore's approach of tying his view of how the issues of today's society can be most effectively addressed to his personal experiences, rather than theory and conjecture, brings substantial credibility to his writings.brThe issues addressed are those of scaling the resources of non-profit, public service, organizations to meet the growing needs of our society in the face of shrinking government resources. The notion of making non-profit organizations self-sufficient is well outlined and easily understood. The Cathedral Within is a book that left me feeling encouraged to know that there is not only room for improvemnt in our social structure but that it is being aggressively and effectively pursued. Not just for non-profits May 17, 2001 8 out of 12 found this review helpful Bill Shore's enlightening book, Transforming Your Life by Giving Something Back is not just about non-profits. It provides insight into every part of human life. He spikes the book with advice about marriage, child care, and friendships. The book, in my opinion, has less to do with non-profits and more to do with living a great life. It is certainly a must read by anyone who cares about humanity. Building A Soul For Business May 18, 2000 12 out of 14 found this review helpful Perhaps the most important points that this book makes are 1) If you can't build the structure, add a few bricks! and 2) Community Wealth and Social Capital are re-inventing business from the soul out! pIn this well-written book, Shore (Founder of Share Our Strength) uses the model of a cathedral to demonstrate that large dreams are community efforts that reach beyond personal lifetimes to accomplish, and that appear impossible until the collective brainpower of the community engages to find a solution. This metaphor addresses the perfectionism that sometimes stops people from making efforts towards social change. In the inspirational stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, readers feel the passion that rebounds of the pages. Echoing the human voice for meaning in an increasingly digital and isolated world, this book suggests practical ways for American wealth to be redefined, redistributed, and built upon foundations that include social interests. It is a blueprint for building ethics into today's business values and ventures that will create a social structure of community wealth. pI read it in one sitting, underlined heavily, and have placed 39 page markers within its covers. The inspiration found between its pages has helped me redesign my own business plan towards the greater good. In short, read it.

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