An Unplanned Life: A Memoir

Thomas (1934–2021), the first Black American to lead a major philanthropic organization, details a life dedicated to helping others in his posthumous memoir. Raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Thomas was taught by his parents to value education and to believe that “if you could imagine it, you could accomplish it.” After serving in the Air Force and graduating from Columbia Law School, he forged an impressive career that spanned six decades, beginning as an attorney for the Federal Housing and Home Finance Agency in 1963. In the late 1960s, Sen. Robert Kennedy recruited Thomas for the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. His success as the group’s president didn’t go unnoticed, which led to directorial roles at major organizations including the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Thomas’s narrative is written in exacting detail, and though his heavy focus on his professional trajectory doesn’t give readers a full picture of him as a person, his sense of conviction and humility easily come through (“I didn’t define myself as a leader,” he writes in response to a newspaper announcement about his appointment as the seventh president of the Ford Foundation). This portrait of selfless civic duty will encourage readers to think beyond the limits of their ambitions. (Dec.)