Creating Room to Read
A Story of Hope in the Battle for Global Literacy
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4.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
The inspirational story of a former Microsoft executive’s quest to build libraries around the world and share the love of books
What’s happened since John Wood left Microsoft to change the world? Just ask six million kids in the poorest regions of Asia and Africa. In 1999, at the age of thirty-five, Wood quit a lucrative career to found the nonprofit Room to Read. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “the Andrew Carnegie of the developing world,” he strived to bring the lessons of the corporate world to the nonprofit sector—and succeeded spectacularly.
In his acclaimed first book, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, Wood explained his vision and the story of his start-up. Now, he tackles the organization’s next steps and its latest challenges—from managing expansion to raising money in a collapsing economy to publishing books for children who literally have no books in their native language. At its heart, Creating Room to Read shares moving stories of the people Room to Read works to help: impoverished children whose schools and villages have been swept away by war or natural disaster and girls whose educations would otherwise be ignored.
People at the highest levels of finance, government, and philanthropy will embrace the opportunity to learn Wood’s inspiring business model and blueprint for doing good. And general readers will love Creating Room to Read for its spellbinding story of one man’s mission to put books within every child’s reach.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A well-intentioned but ultimately self-serving follow-up memoir from the author of Leaving Microsoft To Change The World. At the age of 35, Wood left his executive job at Microsoft to start "Room to Read," a startup charity dedicated to partnering with local communities to bring books to impoverished children all over the globe. From the first five libraries in rural Nepal to the opening of its 10,000th in the book s opening scene, the organization quickly became one of the fastest-growing and most lauded charities of the last decade. The story runs through the birth of Room to Read, his break when on Oprah while flogging his first book, the growth of the ambitious goal to bring literacy to every child in the world, expansion to Africa, growing pains, and the swift growth of the company s reach. Wood is admirably committed to the importance of education in alleviating global poverty, and his stories of children determined against all odds to learn are inspiring, but there s simply not enough here beyond a lukewarm, feel-good tale.
