Creating a World Without Poverty: How Social Business Can Transform Our Lives

While many capitalists are comfortable with letting those on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder waste away in misery, Nobel Peace Prize-winning Yunus and others are coming up with ways to help the impoverished elevate themselves out of squalor. As one of the originators of micro-lending, with his creation of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh 30 years ago, Yunus promotes a new enterprise called ""social business."" Using the alliance of Grameen Bank and the Dannon Company as a model, he explains how a new mode of business could result in unique and improved ways to help poor people. Patrick Lawlor's deliberateness and emphasis help navigate listeners through text that could have been confusing. Sometimes, his rendering of the text sounds a bit condescending and often his accents feel a bit too much like vocal caricatures. Overall, though, his performance works well with the material and is only hindered by poor sound editing, including several vocal shifts and occasionally repeated lines. Simultaneous release with the Public Affairs hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 26).