It's a thorny proposition: the increasing reliance on America's ultra-rich for society's most urgent needs. Government funding of such basic services as education, health care, and arts are becoming more politically manipulated and constrained. Enter the 1%: the Zuckerbergs, Waltons, Gateses, the Buffets. All have opened their wallets for their preferred causes; all exercise control over what meets their personal criteria. On the one hand, their generosity has funded schools, clinics, journalism - an endless list of beneficial gifts to America. On the other hand, what are the hidden costs of shifting the public good into the hands of a small cadre of powerful individuals?

David Callahan's The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age is an inside look at the secretive world of elite philanthropists and how they're quietly wielding ever more power to shape American life for better and for worse. 

David Callahan is the founder and editor of the media site Inside Philanthropy, and co-founder of the national think tank Demos. His earlier books include The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead and Fortunes of Change: The Rise of the Liberal Rich and the Remaking America.