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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope (P.S.) Paperback – Illustrated, July 27, 2010
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Now a Netflix Film, Starring and Directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor of 12 Years a Slave
William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, a country where magic ruled and modern science was mystery. It was also a land withered by drought and hunger. But William had read about windmills, and he dreamed of building one that would bring to his small village a set of luxuries that only 2 percent of Malawians could enjoy: electricity and running water. His neighbors called him misala—crazy—but William refused to let go of his dreams. With a small pile of once-forgotten science textbooks; some scrap metal, tractor parts, and bicycle halves; and an armory of curiosity and determination, he embarked on a daring plan to forge an unlikely contraption and small miracle that would change the lives around him.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a remarkable true story about human inventiveness and its power to overcome crippling adversity. It will inspire anyone who doubts the power of one individual's ability to change his community and better the lives of those around him.
- Reading age11 - 17 years
- Print length320 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Lexile measure860L
- Dimensions5.31 x 0.72 x 8 inches
- Publication dateJuly 27, 2010
- ISBN-100061730335
- ISBN-13978-0061730337
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“William Kamkwamba’s achievements with wind energy should serve as a model of what one person, with an inspired idea, can do to tackle the crisis we face. His book tells a moving and exciting story.” — Al Gore, former Vice President and Nobel Laureate
“This is an amazing, inspiring and heartwarming story! It’s about harnessing the power not just of the wind, but of imagination and ingenuity. Those are the most important forces we have for saving our planet. William Kamkwamba is a hero for our age.” — Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein and Benjamin Franklin
“This book is inspirational. What William did took nothing more than initiative and a little learning, yet he changed his village and his life. There’s never been a better time to Do It Yourself, and I love how much we can learn from those who often have no other choice.” — Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired and author of Free and The Long Tail
“This book is inspirational. What William did took nothing more than initiative and a little learning.... There’s never been a better time to Do It Yourself, and I love how much we can learn from those who often have no other choice.” — Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired and author of Free and The Long Tail
“I first met William on stage at TED.... His story, told in just a couple of minutes, was both astonishing and exhilarating. This book proves what those few minutes hinted at: a remarkable individual capable of inspiring many to take their future into their own hands.” — Chris Anderson, TED Curator
“This book.... is a testament to the power of a dream and the freedom that comes from accomplishing a sustainable way of life. Read this book, act on its message and pass it on.” — Carter Roberts, President & CEO, WWF
“This exquisite tale strips life down to its barest essentials, and once there finds reason for hopes and dreams, and is especially resonant for Americans given the economy and increasingly heated debates over health care and energy policy.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A powerful read. This book takes you on a journey to discover pure innovation and the unfolding story of a natural genius. A true vision of struggle and tenacity to make a bold idea become a reality. This should be required reading for anyone who dares to dream.” — Cameron Sinclair, Eternal Optimist, Architecture for Humanity
“A moving, touching, important story. One more reminder of how small the world is and how powerful the human spirit can be.” — Seth Godin, author of Tribes
“Wonderful! I challenge you to read this story of one young man changing his corner of the world with nothing but intelligence and perseverance and not come away more hopeful about the prospects for a brighter, greener future.” — Alex Steffen, editor, Worldchanging.com
“Beyond opening the door to a nascent genre of African Innovation literature, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind makes excuses about why Africans can’t change their fates untenable. This potent, powerful, and uplifting message is the heart of William Kamkwamba’s courageous story.” — Emeka Okafor, internationally acclaimed author of blogs Timbuktu Chronicles and Africa Unchained
“ In this book, the spirit, resilience and resourcefulness that are Africa’s greatest strengths shine through.... The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a remarkable story about a remarkable young man and his inquisitive and inventive mind.” — Amy Smith, founder, D-Lab, MIT
“I loved this enchanting story of a humble young hero from an impoverished African village who accomplished a miracle with scrap materials and unstoppable enthusiasm. What an inspiration!” — Mark Frauenfelder, founder of boingboing.net, editor in chief of MAKE
“I was moved first to laughter, and then to tears by William’s explanation of how he turned some PVC pipe, a broken bicycle and some long wooden poles into a machine capable of generating sufficient current to power lights and a radio in his parents’ house. — Ethan Zuckerman, cofounder, Global Voices
“One of the best books I’ve ever read.” — Mark Frauenfelder, founder of boingboing.net, editor in chief of MAKE
“A rare and inspiring story of hope in rural Africa....William represents a new generation of Africans, using ingenuity and invention to overcome life’s challenges. Where so many tilt at windmills, William builds them!” — Erik Hersman, AfriGadget.com
“An inspiring tale of an African Cheetah--the new generation of young Africans who won’t sit and wait for corrupt and incompetent governments―or vampire states― to come and do things for them. Here is one who harnessed the wind to generate electricity for his village―on his own.” — Professor George Ayittey, Distinguished Economist, American University
“William will challenge everything you have thought about Africa, about young people, and about the power of one person to transform a community. This beautifully written book will open your heart and mind. I was moved by William and his story and believe you all will. Essential, powerful and compelling.” — Chris Abani, author of Graceland
“William Kamkwamba is an alchemist who turned misfortune into opportunity, opportunity beyond his own. The book is about learning by inventing. William’s genius was to be ingenious.” — Nicholas Negroponte, founder, MIT Media Lab, founder and chairman, One Laptop per Child
“The book abounds with themes that resonate deeply: the idea that with hard work and persistence comes triumph; that optimism is not a mental state but a type of action, that from grief and loss can come success.” — Nathaniel Whittemore, Change.org
From the Back Cover
William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, a country where magic ruled and modern science was mystery. It was also a land withered by drought and hunger. But William had read about windmills, and he dreamed of building one that would bring to his small village a set of luxuries that only 2 percent of Malawians could enjoy: electricity and running water. His neighbors called him misala—crazy—but William refused to let go of his dreams. With a small pile of once-forgotten science textbooks; some scrap metal, tractor parts, and bicycle halves; and an armory of curiosity and determination, he embarked on a daring plan to forge an unlikely contraption and small miracle that would change the lives around him.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a remarkable true story about human inventiveness and its power to overcome crippling adversity. It will inspire anyone who doubts the power of one individual's ability to change his community and better the lives of those around him.
About the Author
William Kamkwamba is a New York Times bestselling author and innovator who designs development projects, including safe water delivery and educational access. William tells his journey of how he achieved his dream of bringing electricity, light, and the promise of a better life to his family and his village in his memoir The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope, co-authored with Bryan Mealer. Since its debut, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind has sold more than 1 million copies and has been translated into nearly twenty languages worldwide. It has been published in two additional editions, a young reader’s version and a children’s book. After graduating from Dartmouth College in Environmental Studies, William began work as a Global Fellow for the design firm IDEO.org. He is an entrepreneur, TED Fellow, and has worked with the WiderNet Project to develop appropriate technologies curriculums focused on bridging the gap between “knowing” and “doing” for young people in Malawi and across the world. William splits his time between the U.S. and Malawi and is currently working full-time with the Moving Windmills Project to bring the Moving Windmills Innovation Center to life in Kasungu, Malawi.
Bryan Mealer is the author of All Things Must Fight to Live: Stories of War and Deliverance in Congo. He is a former Associated Press staff correspondent and his work has appeared in several magazines, including Harper's and Esquire. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Product details
- Publisher : William Morrow; Illustrated edition (July 27, 2010)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0061730335
- ISBN-13 : 978-0061730337
- Reading age : 11 - 17 years
- Lexile measure : 860L
- Item Weight : 8.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.31 x 0.72 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #62,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3 in Wind Energy
- #136 in Scientist Biographies
- #1,870 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
William Kamkwamba
Biography
Background
William Kamkwamba was born August 5, 1987 in Dowa, Malawi, and grew up on his family farm in Masitala Village, Wimbe, two and half hours northeast of Malawi's capital city. The second eldest of Trywell and Agnes Kamkwamba's seven children, William has six sisters.
William was educated at Wimbe Primary School, completing 8th grade and was then accepted to Kanchokolo secondary school. Due to severe famine in 2001-2002, his family lacked the funds to pay the $80 in annual school fees and William was forced to drop out of school midway through his freshman year. For five years he was unable to go to school.
Windmill and other projects
Starting at 14, rather than accept his fate, William started borrowing books from a small community lending library located at his former primary school. He borrowed a 5th grade American textbook called Using Energy, which depicted a wind turbine on its cover. He decided to build a windmill to power his family's home and obviate the need for kerosene, which provided only smoky, flickering, distant and expensive light after dark. First he built a prototype, then his initial 5-meter windmill out of a broken bicycle, tractor fan blade, old shock absorber, and blue gum trees. He was able to power four light bulbs and two radios, and charge neighbors' mobile phones. He then rebuilt a 12 meter windmill to better catch the wind above the trees, and added a car battery for storage, as well as homemade light switches and circuit breakers. He also experimented with building a radio transmitter to broadcast popular music interspersed with HIV prevention messages.
Subsequent projects have included clean water, malaria prevention, solar power and lighting for the six homes in his family compound, a deep water well with a solar powered pump for clean water, a drip irrigation system, and the outfitting of the village team Wimbe United with their first ever uniforms and shoes. Since receiving their sun and wind-themed uniforms, the team has been on a winning streak that has brought the village together with pride. William recently built yet another windmill to pump grey water for irrigation.
The windmill project drew many visitors from kilometers around, including Dr. Hartford Mchazime, Ph.D., the deputy director of the MTTA, the Malawian NGO responsible for the community library. Mchazime brought press, including The Malawi Daily Times, who wrote a long story. Soyapi Mumba and Mike McKay, engineers at Baoabab Health Project in Malawi blogged about the article, and news of William's inventions reached Emeka Okafor, program director for TEDGlobal, a prestigious gathering of thinkers and innovators. Okafor searched quite diligently to find William and invite him to the conference as a fellow. William's presentation led to additional mentors, donors, and companies supporting his education and further projects.
Playwright
Kamkwamba also wrote and performed a HIV prevention comedy with his six best friends, entitled You Can't Judge a Book by its Cover to over 500 villagers on three occasions.
Education
Thanks to hard work and fundraising by Dr. Mchazime, William finally re-enrolled in high school at Madisi secondary school where he spent one trimester, and then transferred to African Bible College Christian Academy, a private prep school in the capital city of Lilongwe. He completed his first full year back in school in June 2008. During summer 2008 he studied immersion English at Regents Language Institute in Cambridge, UK.
In September, 2008, William started as one of 97 inaugural students at the African Leadership Academy, a new pan-African prep school based outside of Johannesburg, South Africa whose mission is to educate the next generation with rigorous academics, ethical leadership training, entrepreneurship and design (africanleadershipacademy.org).
Speaking
Kamkwamba was a fellow at the prestigious TEDGlobal Conference in Arusha, Tanzania where he spoke briefly (video at ted.com) and spoke at the World Economic Forum Africa (weforum.org) meeting in Cape Town, June 2008 where he keynoted the AMD-sponsored technology pre-conference, and spoke on a panel. He spoke at International CES in January, 2009, the grand opening of the African Leadership Academy in February, 2009, the Africa Economic Forum at Columbia University in March, 2009 and will talk at the Aspen Ideas Festival and TEDGlobal 2009 (both July, 2009)
Documentary Film
William is the subject of a documentary short film Moving Windmills, produced by Tom Rielly and directed and edited by Ari Kushnir and Scott Thrift of M ss g P eces which was selected as one of 50 films out of 2500+ entries for Pangea Day, a worldwide film which took place May 10, 2008 in six cities around the world. The film won the North American Filmmaker's Award from Participant Productions, producers of An Inconvenient Truth, Good Night and Good Luck and Charlie Wilson's War. See the film at http://missingpiecesvideo.com/kamkwamba/movingwindmillsFINALsubtitle.mov. Building on their initial success, Tom Rielly and Ben Nabors are currently directing and producing a full-length documentary on Kamkwamba.
Exhibit
Kamkwamba is one of a dozen innovators featured in a new one year exhibit Driving Force: Visionaries Redefining our World, which opened September 3, 2008 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago (www.msichicago.org). The exhibit features the aforementioned film, photos, and actual hand-made electro-mechanical devices built by William.
Book
William is currently finishing his autobiography The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope with co-author Bryan Mealer (author of All Things Must Fight to Live a history of the recent civil war in Congo). William Morrow, an imprint of Harper Collins will publish the book worldwide September 29, 2009.
Media
Kamkwamba was profiled on the front page of The Wall Street Journal December 8, 2007, as well in major articles in The Malawi Daily Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, La Repubblica, and myriad blog posts such as Boing Boing, and his blog has been featured on the front page of news aggregators such as Digg and Reddit. He is featured in an special Africa issue of L'Uomo Vogue.
Find William's blog at http://www.williamkamkwamba.com
Bryan Mealer is the author of The Kings of Big Spring, Muck City and the New York Times bestseller The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind – written with William Kamkwamba. – which has been translated into more than a dozen languages and will soon be released as a major motion picture. He’s also the author of All Things Must Fight to Live, which chronicled his years covering the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the Associated Press and Harper’s. His other work has appeared in Texas Monthly, Esquire, the Guardian, and the New York Times. Mealer and his family live in Austin.
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That he made it is not simply a battle against the wind, but a battle just to survive long enough to get to that point. Much of the book, most of the book takes place before William has ever even heard of TED and the story since then. The prejudices of his community, the superstitions that held back so many, and most notably, the terrible famine that struck his village. You may have seen photos of a starving kid in Africa but you've probably never heard their stories in such a conversational style. William relays the details of the famine as a blogger would telling the story of his day. It's simply a gripping read, a story not heard often in the West, and makes his eventual triumph all the more amazing.
The overall book itself is a quick read. I plowed through it in a few days with a smile often on my face, an occasional chuckle and a few moments in which I said to myself "they'll put this part in the movie for sure". It's a good story from a land where happy endings are far too few and far between. I would recommend it for those who are seeking an inspirational tale or who have an interest in science and the learning process.
I would also recommend a quick review of the TED video and a few others that exist on the net to get some visuals in your head of what William looks and sounds like so you can put a face to the name and a sound to the voice.
If you have not read this book then you really need to. It is a book that works for any age group or gender who would enjoy reading a book about personal triumph over adversity. We read it for a special event at our local book club. We chose to do a "bring a teenager" with you to discuss this particular book. It worked well as it brought a different perspective to our discussion and it was a great way of including children in a hobby that I hope they will all preserve as they grow older.
While reading this book, I thought to myself over and over "how spoiled am I?". This young man was poor, and wanted to go to school so bad, but had to give it up because his family couldn't pay for it. Again, I thought, "man how lucky! I HATED school". Well, after reading this book, I am ever so grateful for the opportunity that I had to attend school.
William was an amazing young man. He worked hard, and did things he had to to make things better for himself and his family. He studied books in the library that he was interested in, and learned things on his own. Sometimes by trial and error, but isn't that how we all learn things?
This reference may offend some, but this young man made me think a lot about some people in the scriptures. He built something, and all the while people made fun of him. It wasn't until they saw the result of his windmill, that people started to respect the work William was doing. It made me think of Noah, and Nephi. Why is it so hard for people to accept that others may have more inspiration than others? Anyway, just a thought.
I love the story in this book about how his parents met. It is so sweet and so innocent. Then when William meets his wife it's kind of the same thing. It's sweet, and super cute.
This young man was such a great example of not giving up. He wanted to learn, he wanted to build, and he wanted to make things better for his people.
To me it doesn't seem like all that long ago that this book took place. So, I was just a little blown away, at how different Williams life was compared to mine. While his country was in a famine I was comfortably sitting in my house with plenty of food to eat, and water to drink. It really made me reflect on all the blessing I have.
While William, was building his windmill and having so many problems with it, all I could think is "man, this young man should see Palm Springs, CA". Well, in the book he gets invited to Palm Springs, to see the windmill farms. While he was struggling to build ONE, we in America had thousands. It was so eye opening to me on so many levels.
This young man went through a lot of hardships in his life, yet he always worked hard, and never gave up. I love William. I think he is the kind of man, that I would like my son to become. He is intelligent, kind, inventive, loving, and a hard worker. All great qualities.
I really enjoy reading, and learning from this book. It was enlightening, and so what I needed to read right now. I will have to remember this book, and many others I have read, when I start to feel "down" about what I have and what I don't have. After reading this book, I have absolutely no room to complain. I am blessed beyond measure. I am so thankful for all the good things that happen to William because of his hard work. I am sure even today he is an amazing man. He is the perfect example of "you can do anything, if you put your mind to it"!
Source: I purchased this book from Amazon for myself. I am not affiliated with Amazon, and was not compensated for this review. These are my own PERSONAL thoughts on the book.
Top reviews from other countries
Una lectura emotiva y personalmente enriquecedora.
Muy recomendable.
Not only did I gain enormous respect for William as a person, but he inspired me to get off my rear, buy a small portable solar panel that doesn't require wiring into the mains, and just make some kind of start at living 'off grid' not because I have to, but merely in honour of the author and because I can do so at the click of a button. Turns out another looming energy price hike justified the outlay, an added bonus!
But this book's lesson runs much deeper - Africa is not a black hole of hope, but is our teacher. We need to relearn the basics and ask ourselves to look again at the way we live, and at how we use resources. We have forgotten how to take care of ourselves, and how to take responsibility and stop blaming others. William had no such luxury supporting him, he had absolutely nothing but the waste tip down the road and what he taught himself, and he just quietly got on with the job. So if this story inspires you too, and if you have any school textbooks going spare, send them to Malawi where books are prized beyond measure and kids LOVE to attend classes, with or without school buildings, because they can and because they love to learn!