The Billionaire Who Wasn’t: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune
By Conor O’Clery
Public Affairs $26.95, 352 pages

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, a mysterious philanthropic fund made a rule of swearing its beneficiaries to absolute secrecy about the origins of the money they received. “The donors do not want to receive any recognition for this gift,” said the letter from a consulting firm in New York.