Ambiguous Victories and Real Progress: Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo:
http://www.randomhouse.com/book/16017...
In which John continues the Nerdfighter Book Club's discussion of Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Are there unambiguous victories? How should we approach our understanding of and relationship with charities domestic and international? I look forward to reading all of your thoughts in comments when I get back.
Some data to start you off:
1. Infant Mortality: http://www.who.int/gho/child_health/m...
2. Trends in child mortality: http://www.who.int/maternal_child_ado...
3. EIU Food Security Index (overview): http://foodsecurityindex.eiu.com/Inde...
4. World Bank figures on Global Income Distribution: http://econ.worldbank.org/external/de...
5. The Economist on Global Inequality: http://www.economist.com/node/21564414
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I think I love you.
I finished TFiOs last night and the tears that followed are all on you! lol ;-;
I have a friend who is a Holocaust survivor. After he was liberated from Dachau, he had to get back home any way that he could, and that meant walking through the towns and villages that had swept up the ashes from the killing ovens daily for the past 6 years. Sam had been in the camps so long that he had become accustomed to being treated like an animal. As he walked through one village, starving and severely malnourished, a woman approached him and held out an apple for him to eat. All at once, Sam felt human again. He had received a small but life-giving gift from a stranger, and that apple meant the world to him. Sam taught me that you don't have to burden yourself, frustrated that you can't save the world. All you have to do is give someone an apple.
