Brown Bag Book Discussion

Sandy Miller will lead a discussion of Melinda Gates' New York Times bestselling book The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World. Participants are encouraged (but not required) to read the book in advance. Ask for a copy at the library’s information desk.

From Publisher's Weekly:

Philanthropist, mother of  three, and wife of  one of  the world’s richest men, Gates delivers a thoughtful and empathetic treatise that demonstrates how empowering women can change the world and lift  families from poverty. Gates’s career as a human rights advocate began with family planning issues, that is, a women’s right to choose when to get pregnant—an unusual stance, she notes, for a longtime practicing Catholic. With each chapter, Gates addresses other thorny issues that hold women down: unreliable maternal and newborn healthcare (“Forty million women a year give birth without assistance”), lack of  access to education (both in the U.S. and abroad) and lack of  access to contraception, child marriage, sex work, and female genital mutilation. Gates writes movingly of  other change makers globally, including investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett (who, with Bill Gates founded the Giving Pledge organization), Pakistani education-activist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Malala Yousafzai, and Dutch human rights activist Mabel van Oranje, who fights to end child marriage—and of  the pride she feels in instilling these values in her children, who have volunteered in organizations throughout Africa. Part memoir, part call to action, Gates’s compassionate narrative underscores her determination to leave a positive mark on this world. She inspires and emboldens in this eloquently argued work.