"Even in our darkest hour, Americans have a willingness to help people halfway around the world, even former 'enemy nations' like Vietnam," Wood writes, with understandable pride. "It would have been easy for this group of Chicagoans to justify turning inward and adopting an 'us-versus-them' mentality. They instead displayed resilience and generosity of spirit. These values are so deeply ingrained in the American psyche that no terrorist could ever hope to wipe them out." Well, let's hope this remains the case.
Wood also relates trying to apply his philosophy of helping one's fellow man in one-off situations. At JFK Airport he discovers a man encountering airport restrictions over a family heirloom, and offers to by-pass the problem by mailing the property back to him. In response he receives gratitude and the inevitable check for his charity of US$1,000. Again, when he decides to develop a "Room to Read" chapter in India, he resolves that an essential component should be an insistence on education for women. A 15-year-old Indian, Anita, had put her predicament to him like this. If he didn't help her stay in school she'll be married within a year with only an eighth-grade pass level. Her husband would have more schooling than that, and would use the fact to dominate her. Undeterred as usual, Wood founds his Indian chapter — before expanding even further, into Cambodia.
The book is spattered with would-be uplifting publicity announcements in bold type, possibly a legacy of Wood's business years. They emphasize the work's one problem, that its dynamic tends to run relentlessly from achievement to achievement, leaving the reader with little role except to applaud.
Leaving Microsoft to Change the World could, as a title, be seen as containing at least a grain of ironic self-mockery, even though the book's grandiloquent subtitle, "An Entrepreneur's Odyssey to Educate the World's Children" makes you wonder if he didn't intend us to take his huge claim literally. Still, this isn't the place to mock what is in essence a brave and engaging success story, with scarcely a trace of the self-righteousness you might have anticipated. John Wood really does cut an inspirational figure with his compassion and faith in humankind, something confirmed by the worldwide response he has elicited to a project no book-lover or educationalist could possibly find it in his heart to fault.
Publication notes
LEAVING MICROSOFT TO
CHANGE THE WORLD
By John Wood
253 pages
Collins
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