:Rockefeller Philanthropy and Modern Biomedicine: International Initiatives from World War I to the Cold War.(Philanthropic and Nonprofit Studies.)

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This collection of essays was inspired by a good idea: that it would be valuable to have a set of comparative case studies showing the Rockefeller Foundation's influence on the development of biomedicine outside the United States during the period from World War I to the Cold War. As is sometimes the case, however, this good idea did not result in a successful book. The editor, William H. Schneider, is a fine historian who knows a great deal about the Rockefeller Foundation, its internal organization and dynamics, and its ways of working in a variety of national settings. But Schneider's ideas have their own limitations, and in this project he was required to work with eight other scholars who do not fully and consistently share his depth of understanding, his expository skill, or even his intellectual agenda. The resulting volume is something of a hodge podge. Schneider sets out his themes in an introduction and a chapter on Richard Pearce and Allan Gregg, the directors of the Foundation's Medical Education and Medical Sciences divisions from 1919 to 1951. He carefully explains the history of the two divisions within the Foundation's frequently realigned political structure, and he outlines broad changes over time in funding mechanisms and priorities. He notes, for example, the shift in focus, from the 1920s to the 1930s, from capital projects and institutional subventions to research grants and fellowship support, and underscores the rise and fall of various countries and scientific fields as primary claimants on philanthropic resources. Schneider also sets the goal for this volume: to look at countries other than the United States where the Foundation attempted to “establish the scientific practice of medicine” and to consider in each of these settings how “philanthropic interests attempted reform amidst the complex play of local and wider influences” (p. 3). Through a set of comparative studies, it should be possible to see “similarities and differences” and to develop a “better understanding of the consequences of local as well as broader influences” (p. 3).