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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind Paperback – September 29, 2009

by William Kamkwamba (Author), Bryan Mealer (Author)

473 customer reviews

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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is the immensely engaging and inspiring true account of an enterprising African teenager who constructed a windmill from scraps to create electricity for his entire community. William Kamkwamba shares the remarkable story of his youth in Malawi, Africa—a nation crippled by intense poverty, famine, and the AIDS plague—and how, with tenacity and imagination, he built a better life for himself, his family, and his village. The poignant and uplifting story of Kamkwamba’s inspiration and personal triumph, co-written with Bryan Mealer, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind has already won ringing praise from former Vice President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore as well as Paolo Coelho, internationally bestselling author of The Alchemist.

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Product Details

Paperback: 273 pages
Publisher: WilliamMr (September 29, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0061730327
ISBN-13: 978-0061730320
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (473 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #95,435 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6 in Books > Engineering & Transportation > Engineering > Energy Production & Extraction > Alternative & Renewable > Wind
- #240 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Scientists
- #307 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Conservation

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4.6 out of 5 stars

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401 of 407 people found the following review helpful

Build a windmill, get invited to TED!

By Doctor.Generosity TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on September 6, 2009

Format: Paperback Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )

This is the story of William Kamkwamba, a clever boy in Malawi, Africa who built his own windmill from found materials at age 14. Much of the energy of the book is that it is a very recent story, the main events taking place just in the last six years.

The story is in three parts. The first part tells of Willam's life growing up and that of his father, giving a fascinating glimpse of the village life of subsistence farmers whose culture has changed little in thousands of years. Daily existence includes very real fears of witchcraft, shamans for healing, and strong currents of superstition. Although written in clear, simple narrative (mostly by the co-author, Bryan Mealer, an AP reporter with extensive experience across Africa), it is by no means a child's bedtime story. Malawi, an interior country of 13 million, has minimal health care, primitive agriculture, and no free public high schools. Villagers can be killed by wild animals in the forest. In 2001 the maize crops failed, plunging the countryside into famine and near social collapse, and William loses friends to disease and starvation. The government comes off badly in this episode, incompetent, brutal against the local village chief who complains, and corrupt.

William is a bright boy eager for school, but his family cannot afford the fees. He is forced to drop out. In the second part of the story, doing the best he can in spite of this disappointment, William finds an elementary physics textbook in a local library and sees diagrams of windmills - he cannot even read the English text. From this bit of information, with impressive focus and persistence he manages to build his own version from scraps of wire, an old bicycle hub, and flattened PVC pipe for blades.Read more ›

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129 of 131 people found the following review helpful

An amazing story of determination and hope

By Rabbi Yonassan Gershom VINE VOICE on September 10, 2009

Format: Paperback Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )

After barely surviving a famine in Malawi (sub-Saharan Africa), 14-year-old William Kamkwamba was determined to find a way to make life better for himself and his family. What if he could somehow bring electricity to his village, to pump water for crops in times of drought? Using diagrams in an old forgotten science book called "Using Energy" that he found in a grade school library, he cobbled together a contraption out of scraps and junk that worked to power a few light bulbs -- and changed the life of his village forever. His neighbors, steeped in superstition and with little or no knowledge of science, thought him crazy. But he had a gift for mechanical things, he understood the principles, and he knew he could do it. And he did. Eventually he got a second windmill going, powering a water pump from a deep well, which is now used by all the women in the village. Today every house there has a solar panel and a battery to store electricity, too.

But this is much more than a story about an African boy who built a working windmill. It's a monument to the human spirit. In fact, we don't even get to making the windmill itself until halfway through the book. In the first half, William tells us a lot about his life in Africa, the terrible famine that swept his land, how he and his family survived, and the clues along the way which eventually led to him making the windmill. Even as a little kid, he was taking apart radios to see how they worked -- with no books or training, just trial and error. Then he saw a bicycle light that ran from a mechanical dynamo -- the kind that generates electricity when you pedal. Experimenting with this, he figured out how to get it to power his radio when he turned the bike pedals.Read more ›

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Such and inspirational story :)

By quibecca on April 18, 2014

Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase

This was a very interesting read. I didn't know what to think about it at the beginning. I know I have said this before, but I don't usually read book like this. I read to escape reality, not read about it. This was so interesting though.

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.Read more ›

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