The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private foundation in the world, with an endowment valued around US$41 billion—with Warren Buffett and Gates pledging much of their fortunes, it will grow bigger—and a total annual grant of around $4 billion. This puts it in the same weight category as the World Health Organization—if the WHO’s budget were controlled by one couple. McGoey’s new book is a timely criticism of a society that allows an individual to accumulate such a distorting amount of financial power; it is
an indictment of unaccountable power in general and of the Gates Foundation in particular.