Book 5: However Long the Night

This is the biography of Molly Melching, a woman who started a non-profit organization called Tostan in Senegal.

I appreciated this description of an organization that seeks solutions from the bottom up, rather than the top down. Tostan provides education to women in small groups, and over time, the women began asking for a module about women's health and the very sensitive issue of female genital cutting. Tostan has been very successful in reducing the rate of female genital cutting where other groups have not because it uses women's social groups and women's ideas to address the real reasons that cutting is practiced.

Book 4: Long Walk to Freedom

If you're interested in Nelson Mandela's life and work, this book is great.

Although there is a lot of information about South African politics that was new to me, it wasn't dry or really even that much over my head! The detail about how apartheid came to exist, and the methods of resistance they used against it, was really interesting.

There are a couple of other books I'd like to read about Mandela's life, including Conversations with Myself, a compilation of primary documents from Mandela's papers. Apparently Mr. Mandela was sometimes uncomfortable with how he was portrayed as nearly perfect. In an unfinished autobiography that was to follow Long Walk to Freedom, he wrote,

One issue that deeply worried me in prison was the false image that I unwittingly projected to the outside world; of being regarded as a saint. I never was one, even on the basis of an earthly definition of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.

A film adaptation of the book was released last year and I haven't seen it, but I have my doubts that it could present Mandela's life in enough detail to be satisfying.

Book 1 of 2014: The International Bank of Bob

I've lowered the bar considerably for 2014, as we prepare for the arrival of not one, but *two* babies. If I read more than 26 books this year, so much the better! But we'll see what happens.

I started this one in 2013 but didn't finish it until January 1. I was almost sad to see it end. Bob Harris had a moment of cognitive dissonance while writing about luxury travel around the world, seeing the migrant workers who build the luxury hotels and the women earning $2 a day cleaning them. He invested the earnings from the travel writing in microloans through Kiva.org.



This was such a delight to read. It was funny and touching, and full of empathy. Bob seems to see his family and himself in almost everyone he encounters around the world.

Come join me on Kiva!

Book 79: Mighty Be Our Powers

At the beginning of her book, Leymah Gbowee says that the story of the African woman is not often told to the rest of the world, and when it is, it is either the story of either starvation or systematic rape as part of warfare.

 
Gbowee tells a story that is neither of these. She was a co-winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in the Liberian peace process.

I found her work in ending the Liberian civil war incredibly interesting, and her personal growth throughout the story was very inspiring, too.

Book 78: The Idealist

I was so excited to read this. And it really was fantastic.



In 2005, economist Jeffrey Sachs wrote a book called The End of Poverty, in which he outlined specific steps that could be taken to alleviate the world's most extreme poverty. His passion about the subject is really quite inspiring--basically, he challenges people to either sit back and allow their fellow human beings to suffer and die, or to do something about extreme poverty.

The book follows the funding and establishment of Millenium Villages, where Sachs' ideas were put into practice. Sadly, there are a lot of unintended consequences of all of these ideas, and things don't turn out quite as anyone expected.

Book 14: An Affair with Africa

I downloaded this kind of on a whim because the title sounded interesting.



It was not at all what I expected, but I really ended up liking it. It was a travel book, very much from an outsider's perspective. In fact, Kistner often mentioned how they listened to conversations about various political issues and didn't comment, since they didn't have the background or experience to discuss them. I came to admire her restraint, since it seems I am always happy to shoot my mouth off about whatever I know even the tiniest fact about. The aspect of the book that I really enjoyed was her descriptions of how they made these expeditions work with their young children along, and that was quite inspiring. Long-term international travel with young children, here we come?

There was a lot of discussion of termites and ants, since Kistner's husband is an entomologist studying myrmecophiles and termitophiles (insects that live with ants and termites), and I found myself dreaming of marching ant columns a couple of times.

Book 77: Bright Lights, No City

This book was an unexpected gem. I picked it up because it's about Whit Alexander, the creator of the game Cranium, and I love Cranium. Strange reason to read the book, huh?




After selling Cranium, Whit started a business called Burro in Ghana, renting rechargeable batteries to people who have no or very limited access to electricity on the grid. Whit's business is based on, and the book discusses in some detail, the idea of creative capitalism. Bill Gates spoke about it at Davos in 2008, when he said,

In a system of capitalism, as people's wealth rises, the financial incentive to serve them rises. As their wealth falls, the financial incentive to serve them falls, until it becomes zero. We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

The book is full of intriguing ideas about international aid and doing business in a developing nation. And it's just a fun story to read, too.