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Why Doesnt Microfinance Work The Dest...
Brief summary
Since its emergence in the 1970s, microfinance has risen to become one of the most high-profile policies to address poverty and under-development in developing and transition countries. It is beloved of rock stars, royalty, movie stars, high-profile politicians and "trouble-shooting" economists. Its most famous pioneer, Muhammad Yunus, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.
In this provocative and controversial analysis, Milford Bateman reveals that microfinance doesn't actually work. That, in fact, the case for it has largely been built on a desire to advance a particular free market ideology, on hype and egregious half-truths, and -- latterly -- on the Wall Street-style greed, deception and individual self-interest of those promoting and working in microfinance. Using a multitude of case studies from across the globe -- from India to Cambodia, Bolivia to Uganda, Serbia to Mexico amongst many others -- he exposes why many of its most fundamental building blocks are largely myths. In doing so, he demonstrates that microfinance actually constitutes a major barrier to sustainable economic and social development, and thus also to sustainable poverty reduction.
As developing and transition countries attempt to repair the devastation wrought by the global financial crisis, Bateman argues forcefully that the role of microfinance in development policy needs to be urgently and fundamentally reconsidered.
ISBN:9781848133327
Author:Milford Bateman
The Obamas The Untold Story of an Afr...
Brief summary
On January 20, 2009, a few hundred men, women, and children gathered under trees in the twilight at K’obama, a village on the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya. Barack Obama’s rise to the American presidency had captivated people around the world, but members of this gathering took a special pride in the swearing in of America’s first black president, for they were all Obamas, all the president’s direct African family.
In the first in-depth history of the Obama family, Peter Firstbrook recounts a journey that starts in a mud hut by the White Nile and ends seven centuries later in the White House. Interweaving oral history and tribal lore, interviews with Obama family members and other Kenyans, the writings of Kenyan historians, and original genealogical research, Firstbrook sets the fascinating story of the president’s family against the background of Kenya’s rich culture and complex history.
He tells the story of farmers and fishermen, of healers and hunters, of families lost and found, establishing for the first time the early ancestry of the Obamas. From the tribe’s cradleland in southern Sudan, he follows the family generation by generation, tracing the paths of the famous Luo warriors—Obama’s direct ancestors—and vividly illuminating Luo politics, society, and traditions.
Firstbrook also brings to life the impact of English colonization in Africa through the eyes of President Obama’s grandfather Onyango. An ambitious and disciplined man who fought in two world wars, witnessed the bloody Mau Mau insurrection, and saw his country gain independence from white rule, Onyango was also hot-tempered and autocratic: family lore has it that President Obama’s grandmother abandoned the family after Onyango attempted to murder her. And Firstbrook delves into the troubled life of Obama’s father, a promising young man whose aspirations were stymied by post-independence tribal politics and a rash tendency toward self-destruction—two factors that his family believes contributed to his death in 1982. They say it was no accident, as described in the president’s memoirs, but rather a politically motivated hit job.
More than a tale of love and war, hardship and hard-won success, The Obamas reveals a family history—epic in scope yet intimate in feel—that is truly without precedent.
ISBN:9781848092723
Author:Peter Firstbrook
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by B...
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
A lot of people talk about how great it is to start a business, but only Ben Horowitz is brutally honest about how hard it is to run one.
In The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, draws on his own story of founding, running, selling, buying, managing, and investing in technology companies to offer essential advice and practical wisdom for navigating the toughest problems business schools don't cover.
His blog has garnered a devoted following of millions of readers who have come to rely on him to help them run their businesses. A lifelong rap fan, Horowitz amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs and tells it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, from cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in.
His advice is grounded in anecdotes from his own hard-earned rise—from cofounding the early cloud service provider Loudcloud to building the phenomenally successful Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, both with fellow tech superstar Marc Andreessen (inventor of Mosaic, the Internet's first popular Web browser). This is no polished victory lap; he analyzes issues with no easy answers through his trials, including demoting (or firing) a loyal friend;
• whether you should incorporate titles and promotions, and how to handle them;
• if it's OK to hire people from your friend's company;
• how to manage your own psychology, while the whole company is relying on you;
• what to do when smart people are bad employees;
• why Andreessen Horowitz prefers founder CEOs, and how to become one;
• whether you should sell your company, and how to do it.
Filled with Horowitz's trademark humor and straight talk, and drawing from his personal and often humbling experiences, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures.
Solve for Happy Engineer Your Path to...
Brief summary
Mo Gawdat is a remarkable thinker and the Chief Business Officer at Google’s [X], an elite team of engineers that comprise Google’s futuristic "dream factory.” Applying his superior skills of logic and problem solving to the issue of happiness, he proposes an algorithm based on an understanding of how the brain takes in and processes joy and sadness. Then he solves for happy.
In 2001 Mo Gawdat realized that despite his incredible success, he was desperately unhappy. A lifelong learner, he attacked the problem as an engineer would: examining all the provable facts and scrupulously applying logic. Eventually, his countless hours of research and science proved successful, and he discovered the equation for permanent happiness.
Thirteen years later, Mo’s algorithm would be put to the ultimate test. After the sudden death of his son, Ali, Mo and his family turned to his equation—and it saved them from despair. In dealing with the horrible loss, Mo found his mission: he would pull off the type of "moonshot” goal that he and his colleagues were always aiming for—he would share his equation with the world and help as many people as possible become happier.
In Solve for Happy Mo questions some of the most fundamental aspects of our existence, shares the underlying reasons for suffering, and plots out a step-by-step process for achieving lifelong happiness and enduring contentment. He shows us how to view life through a clear lens, teaching us how to dispel the illusions that cloud our thinking; overcome the brain’s blind spots; and embrace five ultimate truths.
No matter what obstacles we face, what burdens we bear, what trials we’ve experienced, we can all be content with our present situation and optimistic about the future.
ISBN:9781501157554
Author:Mo Gawdat
Chaos Monkeys by Antonio Garcia Martinez
Brief summary
Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley
Liar’s Poker meets The Social Network in an irreverent exposé of life inside the tech bubble, from industry provocateur Antonio García Martínez, a former Twitter advisor, Facebook product manager and startup founder/CEO.
• The reality is, Silicon Valley capitalism is very simple:
• Investors are people with more money than time.
• Employees are people with more time than money.
• Entrepreneurs are the seductive go-between.
• Marketing is like sex: only losers pay for it.
Imagine a chimpanzee rampaging through a datacenter powering everything from Google to Facebook. Infrastructure engineers use a software version of this "chaos monkey” to test online services’ robustness—their ability to survive random failure and correct mistakes before they actually occur. Tech entrepreneurs are society’s chaos monkeys, disruptors testing and transforming every aspect of our lives, from transportation (Uber) and lodging (AirBnB) to television (Netflix) and dating (Tinder). One of Silicon Valley’s most audacious chaos monkeys is Antonio García Martínez.
After stints on Wall Street and as CEO of his own startup, García Martínez joined Facebook’s nascent advertising team, turning its users’ data into profit for COO Sheryl Sandberg and chairman and CEO Mark "Zuck” Zuckerberg. Forced out in the wake of an internal product war over the future of the company’s monetization strategy, García Martínez eventually landed at rival Twitter. He also fathered two children with a woman he barely knew, committed lewd acts and brewed illegal beer on the Facebook campus (accidentally flooding Zuckerberg's desk), lived on a sailboat, raced sport cars on the 101, and enthusiastically pursued the life of an overpaid Silicon Valley wastrel.
Now, this gleeful contrarian unravels the chaotic evolution of social media and online marketing and reveals how it is invading our lives and shaping our future. Weighing in on everything from startups and credit derivatives to Big Brother and data tracking, social media monetization and digital "privacy,” García Martínez shares his scathing observations and outrageous antics, taking us on a humorous, subversive tour of the fascinatingly insular tech industry. Chaos Monkeys lays bare the hijinks, trade secrets, and power plays of the visionaries, grunts, sociopaths,
ISBN:9780062884480
Author:Antonio Garcia Martinez
I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin
Brief summary
To compose his stunning documentary film I Am Not Your Negro, acclaimed filmmaker Raoul Peck mined James Baldwin's published and unpublished oeuvre, selecting passages from his books, essays, letters, notes, and interviews that are every bit as incisive and pertinent now as they have ever been.
Weaving these texts together, Peck brilliantly imagines the book that Baldwin never wrote. In his final years, Baldwin had envisioned a book about his three assassinated friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King.
His deeply personal notes for the project have never been published before. Peck's film uses them to jump through time, juxtaposing Baldwin's private words with his public statements, in a blazing examination of the tragic history of race in America.
ISBN:9780141986678
Author:James Baldwin
The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates
Brief summary
The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World.
For the last twenty years, Melinda Gates has been on a mission. Her goal, as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift a society up, invest in women.
In this candid and inspiring book, Gates traces her awakening to the link between women's empowerment and the health of societies. She shows some of the tremendous opportunities that exist right now to "turbo-charge" change. And she provides simple and effective ways each one of us can make a difference.
Convinced that all women should be free to decide whether and when to have children, Gates took her first step onto the global stage to make a stand for family planning. That step launched her into further efforts: to ensure women everywhere have access to every kind of job; to encourage men around the globe to share equally in the burdens of household work; to advocate for paid family leave for everyone; to eliminate gender bias in all its forms.
Throughout, Gates introduces us to her heroes in the movement towards equality, offers startling data, shares moving conversations she's had with women from all over the world—and shows how we can all get involved.
Treason by Miguna Miguna
Brief summary
Treason: the case against tyrants and renegades
This is a bold, candid and beautifully written book. Miguna presents vivid details of behind the scenes discussions that preceded the swearing in ceremony of January 30, 2018. The dialogues are verbatim. They are meticulously recorded. The feelings are raw and searing.
The logic and analysis in treason are robust.
"It was sad that the cancer of betrayal was ferociously attacking our liberations movement before the ink I had used to sign the oath of office on. The people’s president had dried ….. I am relieved, however, that my experiences would not go untold. That the future generations now have a permanent record of some of the most atrocious violations of human rights in modern history that have been committed against a Kenyan born citizen by the state.
If I were to die today, history would record that my death would have been caused by the cancer of betrayal by the home guards and renegades. But I would die on my feet a happy man, with the full knowledge that the ideas, aspirations, dreams and values for which I have dedicated my life, will, never die and that in the end and no matter how long it takes, these ideals and values will ultimately triumph over evil, injustice and wrongs that have been inflicted upon me and generations of Kenyans before me,” Miguna writes, eventually, facts and the truth shall prevail over falsehoods, deception and the oppressive machinations of the neocolonial agents of imperialism. That means my commitment and hope. Its also my burning dream.
Becoming a Vessel of Honor by Rebecca...
Brief Summary
Power over Satan Can Be Yours
This book is written for all those children of God who hunger and thirst after a close personal relationship with Him. It is for those who long to hear His voice in their innermost being, who will not be satisfied with anything less than the experience of His presence and glory. It is for those who value such a relationship with our wonderful Creator enough to be willing to pay the price in their own lives to achieve it--the pain of daily carrying the cross.
This book is for those who are willing to strive for holiness in obedience to our beloved Master, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The purpose of this book is to help you understand the rapidly expanding world of the occult so that you can not only cleanse yourself from any involvement in it, but also so that you can avoid its traps.
Subjects include:
The key to spiritual power--personal holiness
• The armor of God--how to use it effectively
• The sin nature--how to understand it and control it
• Defilement of God’s temple--how to avoid it
• The Holy Spirit vs. demon guides--knowing the difference
• Deliverance--case studies and guidelines
This book contains secret satanic war plans previously not found in print. It reveals how the followers of Satan are openly confronting the followers of Jesus Christ. You must learn the key to spiritual power before you need it!
A must for every child of God!
ISBN:9780883683224
Author:Rebecca Brown
Commercial Jiko SaverPro 100 Wood for...
Key Features
With three pieces of wood the SaverPro 100 Wood Professional stove can prepare a meal for 300 students in half the time, while saving up to $2,400 a year in fuel costs. Virtually eliminating smoke, the SaverPro 100 creates a cleaner, healthier kitchen.
• Chimney
• Integrated 100L Stainless Steel Pot
• Insulated Hot Gas Path
• Rust Resistant Combustion Chamber
• Strong Supporting Legs
• Wood Support
• Adjustable / Leveling Feet
Size: Institutional / Commercial
Application: Rural/ Peri-urban / Urban
Assembly: Semi-knockdown
Customer Value*
• Fuel Reduction up to: 80%
• Cooking Time Reduction up to: 50%
• Toxic Emission Reduction up to: 80%
*Percent reductions as compared to
IWA Tier 0 3-stone fire baseline.
Performance
• Efficiency Improvement: 5X
• Estimated Lifespan**: ~5 years
• Time to Boil***: 48 min
• Serving Size: Up to 300 people
**Based on proper usage and maintenance
***Based on 75 liters of water
Excuse Me Your Life is Waiting by Lyn...
Brief Summary
Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting: The Astonishing Power of Feelings,
Is there a way to always have a fat bank account, or a better job, or a delightfully smooth relationship, or a better body? And if so, is it really possible to realize these dreams now, rather than at some unknown future time?Lynn Grabhorn answers these questions with a resounding "Yes!"
In Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting, she says that what actually molds every moment of every day of one's life are feelings.
Using a candid, witty approach to a genre riddled with self-important puffery, she shows how feelings - not positive thinking, or sweat and strain, or good or bad luck, or even smarts - set the tone for people's lives. She frames her theory as a four-part plan that covers all the big topics - money, relationships, health, and spirituality - without being pompous or preachy.
A "must read" for anyone stuck in negativity.
ISBN:9781571743817
Author:Lynn Grabhorn
Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman
Brief Summary
A national bestseller, Authentic Happiness launched the revolutionary new science of Positive Psychology—and sparked a coast-to-coast debate on the nature of real happiness.
According to esteemed psychologist and bestselling author Martin Seligman, happiness is not the result of good genes or luck. Real, lasting happiness comes from focusing on one’s personal strengths rather than weaknesses—and working with them to improve all aspects of one’s life.
Using practical exercises, brief tests, and a dynamic website program, Seligman shows readers how to identify their highest virtues and use them in ways they haven’t yet considered. Accessible and proven, Authentic Happiness is the most powerful work of popular psychology in years.
ISBN:9781864713022
Author:Martin Seligman
Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree by Ada...
Brief Summary
On April 14, 2014, Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls. Some managed to escape. Many are still missing. A new pair of shoes, a university degree, a husband—these are the things that a girl dreams of in a Nigerian village.
A girl who works hard in school and to help her family. A girl with a future as bright as live coals in the dark. And with a government scholarship right around the corner, everyone—her mother, her five brothers, her best friend, her teachers—can see that these dreams aren’t too far out of reach. Even if the voices on Papa’s radio tell more fearful news than tales to tell by moonlight.
But the girl’s dreams turn to nightmares when her village is attacked by Boko Haram, a terrorist group, in the middle of the night. Kidnapped, she is taken with other girls and women into the forest where she is forced to follow her captors’ radical beliefs and watch as her best friend slowly accepts everything she’s been told. Still, the girl defends her existence. As impossible as escape may seem, her life—her future—is hers to fight for.
ISBN:9780062696748
Author:Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani and Viviana Mazza
The Political Economy of Everyday Lif...
Brief Summary
What are the fundamental issues, processes, agency and dynamics that shape the political economy of life in modern Africa? In this book, the contributors - experts in anthropology, history, political science, economics, conflict and peace studies, philosophy and language - examine the opportunities and constraints placed on living, livelihoods and sustainable life on the continent.
Reflecting on why and how the political economy of life approach is essential for understanding the social process in modern Africa, they engage with the intellectual oeuvre of the influential Africanist economic anthropologist Jane Guyer, who provides an Afterword.
The contributors analyse the political economy of everyday life as it relates to money and currency; migrant labour forces and informal and formal economies; dispossession of land; debt and indebtedness; socio-economic marginality; and the entrenchment of colonial and apartheid pasts.
ISBN:9781847011664
Author:Wale Adebanwi
Becoming Hitler The Making of a Nazi ...
Brief Summary
An award-winning historian charts Hitler's radical transformation after World War I from a directionless loner into a powerful National Socialist leader.
In Becoming Hitler, award-winning historian Thomas Weber examines Adolf Hitler's time in Munich between 1918 and 1926, the years when Hitler shed his awkward, feckless persona and transformed himself into a savvy opportunistic political operator who saw himself as Germany's messiah.
The story of Hitler's transformation is one of a fateful match between man and city. After opportunistically fluctuating between the ideas of the left and the right, Hitler emerged as an astonishingly flexible leader of Munich's right-wing movement.
The tragedy for Germany and the world was that Hitler found himself in Munich; had he not been in Bavaria in the wake of the war and the revolution, his transformation into a National Socialist may never have occurred.
In Becoming Hitler, Weber brilliantly charts this tragic metamorphosis, dramatically expanding our knowledge of how Hitler became a lethal demagogue.
ISBN:9780465032686
Author:Thomas Weber
Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
Brief Summary
Madman, tyrant, animal – history has given Adolf Hitler many names. In Mein Kampf (My Struggle), often called the Nazi bible, Hitler describes his life, frustrations, ideals, and dreams. Born to an impoverished couple in a small town in Austria, the young Adolf grew up with the fervent desire to become a painter. The death of his parents and outright rejection from art schools in Vienna forced him into underpaid work as a laborer. During the First World War, Hitler served in the infantry and was decorated for bravery.
After the war, he became actively involved with socialist political groups and quickly rose to power, establishing himself as Chairman of the National Socialist German Worker’s party. In 1924, Hitler led a coalition of nationalist groups in a bid to overthrow the Bavarian government in Munich. The infamous Munich "Beer-hall putsch” was unsuccessful, and Hitler was arrested. During the nine months he was in prison, an embittered and frustrated Hitler dictated a personal manifesto to his loyal follower Rudolph Hess.
He vented his sentiments against communism and the Jewish people in this document, which was to become Mein Kampf, the controversial book that is seen as the blue-print for Hitler’s political and military campaign. In Mein Kampf, Hitler describes his strategy for rebuilding Germany and conquering Europe. It is a glimpse into the mind of a man who destabilized world peace and pursued the genocide now known as the Holocaust. "… I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. In standing guard against the Jew I am defending the handiwork of the Lord”.
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ISBN:9780712652544
Author:Adolf Hitler
The Mis Education of the Negro by Car...
The Mis-Education of the Negro is a book originally published in 1933 by Dr. Carter G. Woodson. The thesis of Dr. Woodson's book is that blacks of his day were being culturally indoctrinated, rather than taught, in American schools.
This conditioning, he claims, causes blacks to become dependent and to seek out inferior places in the greater society of which they are a part. He challenges his readers to become autodidacts and to "do for themselves", regardless of what they were taught:
History shows that it does not matter who is in power... those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they did in the beginning.
Here are quotes from the book:
"If you can control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.” ? Carter Godwin Woodson,
"Philosophers have long conceded, however, that every man has two educators: 'that which is given to him, and the other that which he gives himself. Of the two kinds the latter is by far the more desirable. Indeed all that is most worthy in man he must work out and conquer for himself. It is that which constitutes our real and best nourishment. What we are merely taught seldom nourishes the mind like that which we teach ourselves.” ? Carter G. Woodson
Global Corruption Money Power and Eth...
Brief Summary
Corruption has played a pivotal role in determining the current state of the world - from mass poverty in developing countries, to the destruction of natural resources and to the erosion of trust in political parties.
Laurence Cockcroft here argues that corruption has to be seen as the result of the interplay between elite embedded networks, greed and organised crime. He shows how the growth of corruption has been facilitated by globalisation, the integration of new and expanding markets into the world economy, and by the rapid expansion of offshore financial facilities.
These facilities provide a home to largely unregulated pools of finance derived from personal fortunes, organised crime and pricing malpractice in international trade. By identifying the main drivers of corruption world-wide and analyzing the current action to control them, this book suggests ways in which the problems caused by corruption can be addressed and ultimately prevented.
ISBN:9781848859876
Author:Laurence Cockcroft
Africas Development Impasse Rethinkin...
Brief Summary
Orthodox strategies for socio-economic development have failed spectacularly in Southern Africa. Neither the developmental state nor neoliberal reform seems able to provide a solution to Africa's problems. In Africa's Development Impasse, Stefan Andreasson analyses this failure and explores the potential for post-development alternatives.
Examining the post-independence trajectories of Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa, the book shows three different examples of this failure to overcome a debilitating colonial legacy. Andreasson then argues that it is now time to resuscitate post-development theory's challenge to conventional development.
In doing this, he claims, we face the enormous challenge of translating post-development into actual politics for a socially and politically sustainable future and using it as a dialogue about what the aims and aspirations of post-colonial societies might become. This important fusion of theory with empirical case studies will be essential reading for students of development politics and Africa.
ISBN:9781848136038
Author:Stefan Andreasson
Comprehending and Mastering African C...
Brief Summary
Comprehending and Mastering African Conflicts: The Search for Sustainable Peace and Good Governance
Countries in Africa continue to fall prey to civil war and the disintegration of governmental authority and social order. The contributors to this book believe that a development agenda to improve people's lives and strengthen national economies cannot be effective until Africa masters its problems of governance.
They examine the complex and diverse roots of conflicts in Angola, Burundi and Rwanda, Liberia and Sierra Leone, Somalia and Somaliland, and offer historical and comparative reflections. Drawing on the experiences of Northern Mali, Nigeria, the part played by NGOs in Rwanda, and the role of regional cooperation, they explore possible ways of anticipating, containing and indeed preventing new conflicts.
ISBN:9781856497633
Author:Adebayo Adedeji
