Recorded Books Inc. - There Is No Me Without You: One Womans Odyssey To Rescue Her Countrys Children

Praise forThere Is No Me Without You

A Lukas Prize finalistAnEntertainment WeeklyBest Book of 2006AChicago TribuneBest Book of 2006A Book Sense Notable BookAnAtlanta Journal-ConstitutionBest Book of 2006An ALA Notable BookAChristian Science MonitorBest Book of 2006OregonianTop Ten Booksof 2006APublishers WeeklyBest 100 Books of the YearAnAnchoragePressBest Book of 2006

"The happy occasion of wonderful and weighty material meeting a gifted narrator... A gripping and heartfelt read."Christian Science Monitor

"Like the very best literature, There is No Me Without You charts the human condition in all its extremespassion and cruelty, greed and couragethrough the narrative arc of an ordinary person thrust into a vortex... Greene's portrayals of how orphans ache for a parent, any parent, are soul-wrenching... [Haregewoin's] ultimate humanitarian legacy is beautifully captured in the book's final descriptions of several AIDS orphans who were saved by her love and are now thriving with their new families in Vermont, Georgia, Michigan and Arizona."SanDiego Union-Tribune

"What makes There Is No Me Without You such an effective and beautiful book is its marshaling of such mind-numbing statistics alongside stories of courage and hope that combine to create a picturenot just of the compound in Addis Ababa where Haregewoin Teferra, Ethiopia's controversial Mother Teresa, established a family of orphaned children, but also of a larger human family that any reader would be proud to be part of."Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Unforgettable... Greene brings Africa's AIDS catastrophe to us as bracingly as the movie Hotel Rwanda brought home the horrors of genocide."More

"Simultaneously portrays how huge and intractable the problem is while giving it a face and breaking your heart... It's a story that moves the AIDS debacle beyond the abstraction of mind-numbing statistics, and Greene tells it well, with the eye of a good reporter and the passion of personal involvement... Greene is a pro, someone who reins in both her feelings and her facts in service of the single, affecting image of one woman driving herself to exhaustion with compassion and hope."Seattle Times

"A gripping narrative about the AIDS pandemic in Africa."Life

"In addition to chronicling Teferra's story, Greene provides a scientific and cultural history of AIDSone in which she makes withering assessments of government leaders and pharmaceutical companiesand also a history of Ethiopia. But Greene is too shrewd a storyteller to think that it's statistics that will motivate people to act, or even make them cry. Without a doubt, this is a three-hankie read, but it's because of the stories about individuals... The combination of Greene's maternal tendencies and narrative gifts make her the ideal person to tell this timely story."Curtis Sittenfeld,Salon

"It's quite possible that of all the narrative nonfiction writers working today, no one is better than Melissa Fay Greeneof Praying for Sheetrock fameat turning big, sprawling topics into accessible, great reads that put a human face on the otherwise too-big-to-grasp issues."American Way

"An unforgettable tale of compassion in one of the most destitute situations of our time."New York Daily News

"Greene has a gift for making her reader see what society keeps on the periphery, and for clamping our attention to the page... Readers who liked MountainsBeyond Mountains will find Greene is a stronger storyteller than Tracy Kidder. Both struggle with the mystery of goodness, but Greene's protagonist is not a saintly American doctor. Teferra is a flawed, feisty, unforgettable character of the (un)developing world... The book concludes with a unique adoption, told in an unexpected sequence of remarkable beauty and power. It answers some key questions, and left me gasping."Cleveland Plain Dealer

"A book that manages to humanize the epidemic's enormity without diminishing its impact... Underfunded and overworked, Haregewoin's no saint, Greene makes clear. She's merely one human being responding to the unfathomable. As Greene herself did with this book. As untold numbers of readers may, perhaps, after reading it."Oregonian

"A harrowing, beautiful book... There Is No Me Without You isn't just Teferra's story. Greene ably dons the mantle of historian, recounting Ethiopian history; and that of the science writer, exploring the origins of the AIDS virus; and of the social commentator, taking to task the drug companies and Western politicians who should have done more much sooner to help avert disaster."ColumbusDispatch

"Heartbreaking but never maudlin."Outside

"An important book... Award-winning author Melissa Fay Greene's stunning There Is No Me Without You [tells] the big story of AIDS in Africa through the small story of one Ethiopian woman running an AIDS orphanage, and of Greene's adoption of two Ethiopian orphans into her Atlanta home."Atlanta JournalConstitution

"There Is No Me Without You is spectacular, both in its intimacy and in its reach. Melissa Fay Greene's writing sings. It agitates. It inspires. Even those who think they know about the AIDS crisis in Africa will savor this book; and for those who know little or nothing about it, this is the way in, a way paved with decency and with hope. It is our contemporary Schindler's List, one person's heroic efforts to right a tilting world. After you read There Is No Me Without You, the world will never look the same."Alex Kotlowitz, author ofThere Are NoChildren Here

"More than a vivid, readable account of individual courage in the face of apparently overwhelming odds, this is an important book... This is the story of Haregewoin and the children who came to heroften brought by their dying parentswho have been adopted by new families all over the world. Deftly interwoven with these candid, evocative biographies is a comprehensive account of the global emergence, epidemiology and impact of HIV/AIDS." Times(London)

"This searing account humanizes the statistics through heartbreaking, intimate stories of what it is like for young orphans left alone in Ethiopia... Greene tells the stories in unforgettable vignettes of loss, secrecy, panic, stigma, and, sometimes, hope... Just as moving are the personal stories of international adoptions in the U.S., including two Ethiopian children taken into Greene's own Atlanta family. The detail of one lost child at a time, who finds love, laughter, comfort, and connection, opens up the universal meaning of family." Booklist(starred review)

"As with her previous books, Greene takes a very close look at what appears to be the fringe of an important social event and illuminates the entire subject. Ethiopia is home to 'the second-highest concentration of AIDS orphans in the world'; even as some of the orphans find happy endings in American homes, Greene keeps the urgency of the greater crisis before us in this moving, impassioned narrative."Publishers Weekly(starred review)

"I read a lot of great books this year, but if I had to choose one to give as a gift it would be There Is No Me Without You. It's the wrenching, true story of an Ethiopian woman who opens her home to children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic. I read the book during a long plane flight this summer, and it took a Herculean effort not to start weeping right then and there."Kevin Boyle, history professor atOhio State University and National Book