William Kamkwamba made a name for himself in the green world a few years ago when he built a homemade wind turbine to provide power to his home in his small Malawian village. He built it using bicycle parts, discarded PVC pipes, wood and knowledge gleaned from an old library book. His story took the Internet by storm and he was invited to speak at the annual power-gabfest TED where he made a lot of new fans and supporters. (I wrote a post a while back on DIY wind turbines, based on Kamkwamba's ideas.)

 

Author Bryan Mealer wrote a book with Kamkwamba called The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind that's coming out at the end of this month that describes Kamkwamba's work and subsequent rise to fame.

 

I was happy to read this morning in Facebook that Amazon has named The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind as one of their Best Books of the Month. That should add a whole lotta sales to their total, and it couldn't have happened to a smarter guy.

 

I'm going to pre-order The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. if you want a good green read, you should too.

 

And while I'm talking about books, I'll also drop a link to my MNN editor Benyamin Cohen's video promoting the paperback release of his great book, My Jesus Year.