An edifying work and a thorough introduction to an important issue of social justice.
A panoramic account of efforts to relieve poverty with microcredit programs.
Nonprofit consultant and author Counts astutely observes that, throughout history, poverty alleviation often focused on the weaknesses of disadvantaged communities, rather than their strengths. He agrees with Bangladeshi economist and Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus’ theory that the people who manage to survive great deprivation are often “highly motivated entrepreneurs” who need organizations and structures to flourish. In this rigorously researched and granular account, the author surveys the history of Yunus’ devotion to microfinancing as well as his founding of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in the 1980s to provide small loans to hardworking but cash-strapped entrepreneurs. Yunus’ methods were revolutionary, Counts notes, as they focused on customized solutions for different localities and borrowers: “He believed that the entire exercise in planning should be turned upside down so that the national plan is mainly the sum of thousands of smaller plans developed at the village level.” Counts ably defends Yunus against potential detractors, whom the author characterizes as “fickle philanthropists and journalists,” and furnishes an empirically convincing advocacy of his approach, which was promulgated in many other countries by the World Bank. Moreover, he informatively profiles some women in Bangladesh, as well as in Chicago, who found success through microcredit. Overall, Counts’ overview is dizzyingly expansive; readers are treated to a history of Bangladesh, the microcredit movement, Yunus’ career as an economist, and much more—so much more, in fact, that it can be overwhelming at times. However, his prose is crystal-clear throughout, even when broaching technically formidable matters, and he succinctly summarizes the “humanistic values” that undergird Yunus’ economic vision.
An edifying work and a thorough introduction to an important issue of social justice.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-953943-19-4
Page Count: 410
Publisher: Rivertowns Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For fans only.
The hoodie-and-shorts-clad Pennsylvania senator blends the political and personal, and often not nicely.
Fetterman’s memoir addresses three major themes. The first—and the one he leads with—is depression and mental illness, which, combined with a stroke and heart trouble, brought him to a standstill and led him to contemplate suicide. The second is his rise to national-level politics from a Rust Belt town; as he writes, he’s carved a path as a contentious player with a populist streak and a dislike for elites. There are affecting moments in his personal reminiscences, especially when he writes of the lives of his working-class neighbors in impoverished southwestern Pennsylvania, its once-prosperous Monongahela River Valley “the most heartbreaking drive in the United States.” It’s the third element that’s problematic, and that’s his in-the-trenches account of daily politics. One frequent complaint is the media, as when he writes of one incident, “I am not the first public figure to get fucked by a reporter, and I won’t be the last. What was eye-opening was the window it gave into how people with disabilities navigate a world that doesn’t give a shit.” He reserves special disdain for his Senate race opponent Mehmet Oz, about whom he wonders, “If I had run against any other candidate…would I have lost? He got beaten by a guy recovering from a stroke.” Perhaps so, and Democratic stalwarts will likely be dismayed at his apparent warmish feelings for Donald Trump and dislike of his own party’s “performative protests.” If Fetterman’s book convinces a troubled soul to seek help, it will have done some good, but it’s hard to imagine that it will make much of an impression in the self-help literature. One wonders, meanwhile, at sentiments such as this: “If men are forced to choose between picking their party or keeping their balls, most men are going to choose their balls.”
For fans only.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780593799826
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.
Enduring the unthinkable.
This memoir—the first by an Israeli taken captive by Hamas on October 7, 2023—chronicles the 491 days the author was held in Gaza. Confined to tunnels beneath war-ravaged streets, Sharabi was beaten, humiliated, and underfed. When he was finally released in February, he learned that Hamas had murdered his wife and two daughters. In the face of scarcely imaginable loss, Sharabi has crafted a potent record of his will to survive. The author’s ordeal began when Hamas fighters dragged him from his home, in a kibbutz near Gaza. Alongside others, he was held for months at a time in filthy subterranean spaces. He catalogs sensory assaults with novelistic specificity. Iron shackles grip his ankles. Broken toilets produce an “unbearable stink,” and “tiny white worms” swarm his toothbrush. He gets one meal a day, his “belly caving inward.” Desperate for more food, he stages a fainting episode, using a shaving razor to “slice a deep gash into my eyebrow.” Captors share their sweets while celebrating an Iranian missile attack on Israel. He and other hostages sneak fleeting pleasures, finding and downing an orange soda before a guard can seize it. Several times, Sharabi—51 when he was kidnapped—gives bracing pep talks to younger compatriots. The captives learn to control what they can, trading family stories and “lift[ing] water bottles like dumbbells.” Remarkably, there’s some levity. He and fellow hostages nickname one Hamas guard “the Triangle” because he’s shaped like a SpongeBob SquarePants character. The book’s closing scenes, in which Sharabi tries to console other hostages’ families while learning the worst about his own, are heartbreaking. His captors “are still human beings,” writes Sharabi, bravely modeling the forbearance that our leaders often lack.
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063489790
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harper Influence/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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