"I have titled these memoirs Can You Make a Difference?" writes economist and social activist Robert Schwartz, "because trying to make a difference is pretty much what most of my life has been about. And I like to think I have made at least a small difference."Schwartz is being modest. This book is a testament to the extraordinary times that Robert Schwartz has lived through and the efforts he has made to be up to the challenge those times posed.
Growing up with a strong social conscience, Schwartz has dedicated a considerable portion of his eighty-five years to trying to build a more just, peaceful, democratic, and habitable world. He helped establish the American Veterans Committee, Peace Action (formerly SANE), Wall Street Executives Against the War, Socially Responsible Investments, and Economists Allied for Arms Reduction.
As the distinguished economist and social critic John Kenneth Galbraith writes in his foreword, "this is the history of a lifetime of intelligent and commanding effort."
Can You Make a Difference?, however, is more than a memoir of a life dedicated to human and civil rights in the United States. It is a call for the younger generation to repair a degraded environment, stop the encroaching limitations on civil rights, and banish once and for all the still-present specter of discrimination.
