In the mid-1990s, I was introduced to Muhammad Yunus, whose micro-credit movement in Bangladesh was just beginning to attract attention. The concept was brilliantly simple: small loans, mainly to women, enable people to create money streams of their own—like, purchasing a sewing machine, for example. Virtually all of the loans were repaid. Hillary Clinton, as first lady, among other international figures, endorsed the Yunus concept, and his Grameen Bank became recognized as a founding pillar of a truly innovative way to support some of the world's poorest people.
PublicAffairs published Yunus's Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle against World Poverty in 1999. The book sold steadily but modestly. While I was personally impressed with Yunus and tried to learn as much as possible about Grameen and the concept of micro-credit, I kept wondering whether or when some reporter or critic would do a major take-down of the principle, the bank or the man.
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