Being Rapoport

by Rapoport, Bernard; Carleton, Don E.

• ISBN13: 9780292771178
• ISBN10: 0292771177
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of Texas Pr

Summary

Bernard Rapoport has lived the American Dream. Born to Russian Jewish immigrant parents in San Antonio, Texas, in 1917, he grew up in poverty and worked his way through the University of Texas during the Great Depression. In 1951, he founded the American Income Life Insurance Company, which he developed into a multi-million dollar business. Using his wealth to support a host of local, national, and international organisations, Rapoport was named by Fortune magazine as one of America's forty most generous philanthropists, unstinting in his support for education, social justice, and liberal political causes.In this memoir, Rapoport recalls a life of hard work and a philosophy of giving that made him a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist. He explains how his early experiences of poverty and his youthful acquaintance with Marxists and New Deal economists shaped him into a capitalist with a conscience. Rapoport goes on to describe his liberal activism as a supporter of Democrats from Ralph Yarborough to Tom Daschle to his good friends Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, an underwriter of the political journal The Texas Observer, a regent of the University of Texas System, a supporter of the state of Israel, and a champion of at-risk students.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Don Carleton
Introduction	xi
Bill Moyers
Beginnings	1	(27)
When My Life Began: The University Years	28	(22)
A Blind Date and the Rainey Crusade	50	(22)
An Insurance Entrepreneur	72	(25)
A Liberal Trichotomist	97	(22)
Insuring Labor	119	(16)
Vietnam and the Politics of Tumult	135	(27)
The Texas Observer	162	(12)
From Entrepreneur to CEO: AILICO in the 1970s and 1980s	174	(10)
Politics, 1976--1984	184	(23)
Israel	207	(22)
A University Regent	229	(28)
William Jefferson Clinton	257	(20)
American Income in the 1980s and 1990s	277	(11)
To Save the World: The Rapoport Foundation	288	(15)
Index	303