The Challenge For Africa by Wangari Maathai. The author was born and raised in Kenyon. She went to the US for her college education and then returned to Kenya. She earned a PhD, taught at the university in Nairobi, started the Green Belt Movement (an environmental movement whose main purpose is to plant trees), won [...]
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The Road of Lost Innocence
The Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly Mam. Women’s Studies. Somaly Mam has won many international prizes for her work. She has even been mentioned as a Nobel Peace Prize candidate. This is her autobiography. She was born in Cambodia in the early 1970′s. (She has no birth certificate.) She was left in the village [...]
Beaded Hope
Beaded Hope by Cathy Liggett. This is fiction, although the charitable organization, Beaded Hope, is real. In this story, 4 American women go on a mission trip to South Africa. They all have problems. One woman has had multiple miscarriages and is afraid to adopt. She is also afraid that she may be losing her [...]
Gaviotas by Alan Weisman
Gaviotas by Alan Weisman. Columbia is a country blessed with abundant natural resources and well-educated people. It is also plagued by drugs, paramilitaries and violence. In 1966 Paolo Lugari started the village of Gaviotas on the eastern savannah in Columbia. The soil there is very thin and high in aluminum. Nothing grew except grasses. Engineers [...]
Dance Lest We All Fall Down
Margaret Willson, the author of the book “Dance Lest We All Fall Down”, is an American anthropologist. She had worked all around the world before she went to Brazil for a visit in 1991. She returned and lived there for several years. She fell in love with the area and the people. The Brazilian Constitution [...]
Miss Garnet’s Angel
Miss Garnet’s Angel by Sally Vickers. Fiction. In this novel, Julia Garnet is a retired English schoolteacher who decides to spend 6 months in Venice after her longtime friend and roommate, Harriet, dies. She meets several people there including an Italian pedophile, a man and a woman restoring a chapel who share a deep and [...]
Why Africa Matters
Why Africa Matters by Cedric Mayson. The reason that the author gives for Why Africa Matters is the spirit of ubuntu. This is not a “how to” book, but the presentation of a new vision; a way to lead Earthlings (how the author refers to human being on earth) from the failures of the past [...]
Made for Goodness
Made for Goodness by Desmond and Mpho Tutu. Main Collection, DDN 170. The authors are Anglican priests in South Africa and they are black. They were there during apartheid. They say that evil and sin do exist, they have seen the effects, but the choice between evil and the goodness that is inherent in every [...]
Our Last Best Chance
Our Last Best Chance by King Abdullah II, Main 956. This book was written by King Abdullah II of Jordan. On the one hand, it is an autobiography. It tells about his childhood, education and events before and after he became king. But it is also about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. King Abdullah is a moderate [...]
My Sister, the Father
My Sister, the Father. by Meri Whitaker. Main, 248. Meri Whitaker was a missionary/pastor in Oklahoma for 20+ years. She worked mainly with the rural poor. This book is a collection of stories/observations from that time. It can be read straight through or used for daily readings. Some of the stories are humorous and some [...]
