For my "Economics of Gender in Developing Countries" class we read Unbowed, for SCU's sustainability day.  I assigned it on a whim, and dreaded that it was going to be terrible.  (By the way, Elliot and I have a new standard for worst non-fiction ever, Beck Weathers' Everest saga, Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest... just terrible... but as Elliot said, "Dad, he was left for dead, TWICE, on the summit... what do you think happened to his brain?")

Well, Unbowed was not terrible.  Quite a good read, in fact.  Not a great non-fiction memoir, but full of interesting observations on Kenyan society and anecdotes to make it a speedy read.  Oddly, you barely get a sense of Maathai's actual accomplishments.  She focuses much more on events that happened, spending many pages describing, for example, a protest in a gazetted forest, and only a couple sentences on the logistics of the organization she founded and nurtured, the Greenbelt Movement.  Her lengthy description of her childhood and her parents is a very nice introduction for students of how a relatively elite young women in colonial and post-colonial Africa would have grown up.  She is an activist, so there is not much philosophical reflection or analysis in the book (other than the, "Why can't we all be better" variety).  Come to think of it, I don't think she actually discusses any fiction or "big ideas" in the book.  She is one of those people that are always talking and doing.  Places like Kenya in the 1970s and 1980s, sinking into dictatorship and social instability,  need exactly that personality type.  So a thumbs up.  Not the best memoir, but a nice (and cheap, both in price and opportunity cost) read, especially for university students with no Africa experience who need a little inspiration.