Micro-lending and the Battle Against World Poverty
by Muhammad Yunus
age: any
First sentence: “In the yer 1974 Bangladesh fell into the grip of famine.”

I really don’t know how to write this review without sounding crass, selfish, uppity, obnoxious… because I didn’t finish the book. Strike that: couldn’t finish the book. It bored me. To tears.

It’s essentially a memoir by the man — Yunus — who founded Grameen Bank, an organization that gives micro-loans (those of piddly amounts that “normal” banks won’t handle) to people way, way below the poverty line. It’s less about his life, though, and more about the struggles and trials he had in setting up this idea and the challenges and experiences he had getting it to work.

I thought that would be interesting. But Yunus is a boring writer. He’s not maudlin, something which I appreciated, but it’s essentially a list: he had this idea, he set about getting it to work, he ran across some resisitance, he happened to know someone high up in the government, he got past the resistance. Yeah. Whatever.

As I said, I sound crass. I should be insterested and moved and touched by this man’s efforts to help those with much, much less. And I am; he’s going whatever good he can, working within the system rather than trying to reinvent it (mostly). But, his book, I am sorry to say, is not nearly as good as his ideas.