Faith is a Verb: On the Home Front with Habitat for Humanity in the Campaign to Rebuild America (and the World)

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Gimlet Eye Books, 2005 - Architecture - 156 pages
Chris Goodrich, author of books on Yale Law and the mystique of building your own sports car, thought writing about the world's largest non-profit home-builder would be a lark. But then he caught 'infectious Habititis'...and now spends every available minute volunteering with Habitat. "Hmmm...write tomorrow's fishwrap, or save the world?" he says. "In the end, it wasn't a hard choice." Faith is a Verb is both an account of the author's years building with Habitat and a history of the organization, which Goodrich sees as a model institution founded on grassroots, Jeffersonian principles. The reader looks over his shoulder as Goodrich helps restore a burned-out drug den to its Victorian glory in Bridgeport, Connecticut; understands the yawning gap between the rich and poor as he straightens nails with an impoverished teenager in the Dominican Republic; senses the importance of volunteer work as he watches, while laying a stone foundation in Paraguay, the Twin Towers fall on 9/11.

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Contents

Not Charity but Capital
45
But Were Gonna Be Busy
63
Amateur Hour
89
For the Mutual Benefit of All Persons
111
Interested or Very Interested? 23
133
Acknowledgments 48
150
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