Niloc Retseh Professor Hester ENG 102-0XX Spring 2013 — Summary Paper Changing Lives, One Book at a Time In his 05 November 2011 article in The New York Times, “His Libraries, 12,000 So Far, Change Lives,” Nicholas Kristoftells the story of how John Woodhas opened 12,000 libraries and 1,500 schools around the world. According to Kristof, Wood’s charity, Room to Read, has stocked those libraries and schools with over 10 million books. Kristofstates that Room to Read opens six new schools a day, or, Kristofpoints out, six times as many as the number of outlets McDonald’sopens. Kristofwrites that since Woodquit Microsoft and founded Room To Read in 2000, Woodhas also self-published 591 children’s titles in a variety of remote and diverse languages. Kristofquotes Wood that some languagesdon’t have children’s books. Thus, Room To Readhas ferreted out children’s authors in languages such as Xhosa, Chhattisgari and others. Kristofinforms us that Woodis currently seeking “’…the Dr Suess of Cambodia.’” Further, Wood, Kristofemphasizes, has changed the lives of 13,500 otherwise impoverished girls by keeping them in school. Kristofrelates how hemet one such girl, Le Thi My Duyen. Floodshad forcedher familyto live “…in a shabby tent on a dike,” Kristofreports, and those floodshad also forced Duyen to drop out of school. According to Kristof, Room to Readpaid for Duyen to not only go back to school but to live in the dormitory and avoid a four-hour daily bicycle-and-boat commute, all at a cost of a mere $250 per year. This tiny amount, Kristofpoints out, dwarfs in comparison to the billions and billions wespend on missiles and troops for our foreign interventions and, as Kristofquotes Wood, that tiny amount“…can change a girl’s life forever….” Kristofargues that Woodsucceeds because of his hard-headed, business-like approach. Kristofexplains that Woodutilizes his marketing background at Microsoft to spread the word to 53 Room To Read chapters around the globe. From these 53 chapters, Kristofproclaims, Woodattacks illiteracy “as if it were Netscape,” aiming for 100,000 libraries and relegating illiteracy to “…the scrapheap of history,” all within 20 years. Wes Janz This Is Flint, Michigan Buick City parking lot, 2010. [All photographs by the author, except as noted.] "Distressed are big chunks of Detroit, Flint, Gary, Chicago, East St. Louis, and Cincinnati." This is what I wrote after completing the weeklong Midwess Distress Tour with my Ball State colleague Olon Dotson and a dozen architecture students in October 2006. "Depressed. Dysfunctioned. Disoriented. Devolved. Dissed. Dissing. How many abandoned buildings should I photograph and take others to photograph before we get the picture? How many houses do you have to see being torn from a city’s fabric before the tearing of one life from another no longer registers? When should you stop, or start, caring?" After "Midwess," I saved an email that Glenn Johnson, a property manager a.