More About This Book
Review Excerpts
The Columbus Dispatch – February 25, 2013
“A funny, heartfelt guide to world improvement, and how one person (Harris, or you, or me, for instance), might make a difference… There is enormous happiness in this book… a plea to look at the world a new way… persuasive and optimistic… In fact, I am going to type the final sentence of this review, then, thanks to a smart and funny author who called it to my attention, I am going to Kiva.org to see if there is any good I can do.”
— Rob Hardy
Booklist – March 1, 2013
“While on assignment in Dubai to cover the world’s most luxurious hotels, Harris got sidetracked by the stories of the indentured immigrant laborers conscripted to build these palaces of opulence. Determined to do something to help the families of the working poor worldwide, he signed up with Kiva, an organization that allows individuals to lend money via the Internet to people in developing countries by providing “microfinancing” loans to small family businesses, for everything from buying material and supplies to the purchase of cows and goats. Not content with merely helping from afar, Harris volunteered to tour the world and meet some of the Kiva recipients, and this is where the story really begins. Traveling to challenging and often war-torn places like Peru, Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, and Beirut, Lebanon, he checks out the repair shops, furniture businesses, hair salons, yogurt makers, and livestock owners who have been made successful by the microloans, but, most important, he learns firsthand about their personal and political struggles and is deeply impacted by the lives of the new friends he makes along the way.”
— David Siegfried
