Bob Geldof: The Rock Star Who Raised $140 Million for Famine Relief in Ethiopia

by Charlotte Gray

Follows the early years, musical career, and charity work of the musician who organized the Live Aid project and raised more money for the starving in Africa than anyone else in the world.

68 pages, Library Binding

First published April 19, 1990

About the author

Charlotte Gray is one of Canada’s best-known writers, and author of eight acclaimed books of literary non-fiction. Born in Sheffield, England, and educated at Oxford University and the London School of Economics, she began her writing career in England as a magazine editor and newspaper columnist. After coming to Canada in 1979, she worked as a political commentator, book reviewer and magazine columnist before she turned to biography and popular history.

Charlotte's most recent book is Gold Diggers, Striking It Rich in the Klondike. In 2008, Charlotte published Nellie McClung, a short biography of Canada’s leading women’s rights activist in the Penguin Series, Extraordinary Canadians. Her 2006 bestseller, Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell, won the Donald Creighton Award for Ontario History and the City of Ottawa Book Award. It was also nominated for the Nereus Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize, the National Business Book Award and the Trillium Award. Her previous five books, which include Sisters in the Wilderness, The Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill, Flint & Feather, The Life and Times of E. Pauline Johnson and A Museum Called Canada, were all award-winning bestsellers.

Charlotte appears regularly on radio and television as a political and cultural commentator. In 2004 she was the advocate for Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, for the CBC series: The Greatest Canadian. She has been a judge for several of Canada’s most prestigious literary prizes, including the Giller Prize for Fiction, the Charles Taylor Prize for Non-fiction and the Shaunessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.

Charlotte has been awarded five honorary doctorates, from Mount St. Vincent University, Nova Scotia, the University of Ottawa, Queen’s University, York University and Carleton University.

An Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of History at Carleton University, Charlotte is the 2003 Recipient of the Pierre Berton Award for distinguished achievement in popularizing Canadian history. She is former chair of the board of Canada’s National History Society, which publishes the magazine Canada’s History (formerly The Beaver.) She sits on the boards of the Ottawa International Authors Festival, the Art Canada Institute/Institut de l’Art Canadien, and the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Ottawa. Charlotte is a member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Charlotte lives in Ottawa with her husband George Anderson, and has three sons.

Reviews

[Joshua · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bob Geldof's “Africa's Champion” , is a memoir about how a average kid growing up a average way becomes a man who helps change Africa's history and do things no other average man/woman would. Bob Geldoff starts of as a normal kid with a father from a higher class background and a working mother that dies when he is about seven. After years of struggling with poor academic performances, and dropping out of college followed by more years of being broke and traveling to many places in England looking for a job, things surprisingly take a turn for the better while he was in Canada working as a news editor. Bob then decided to return to England and among other jobs, he decided to pursue a music career as the lead singer and writer. Him and his band, “The Boomtown rats” become one of the greatest bands in British history (even though he is not British but Irish) with their unconventional music. Even though they were a big success, their luck was changing and one day when he was feeling blue and he was watching TV, he saw the African famine happening. He witnessed millions of men, women, and children starving in Africa. Bob realized that even if he was having big money problem for him and his family, his problem seemed so little compared to the famine. He decides that he wanted to do was to raise money to help all those dying people. He and his group members organize Band Aid (a concert to collect money for the famine victim) and generated about 5m dollars. Bob thought that it was not enough compared to the number of people that needed help. So bob decided that he wants to generate even more money by having concert all over the world at the same time and use the best of the best singers like Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, Lionel Richie, etc. He would call it Live Aid and they would play in massive stadiums like Wembley where the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge come and many other Famous People. After the Show In England, US, and Ireland ended they had generated over 94 million dollars. After everything died down Bob was also asked to personally take the money to Africa and work with health organizations which he did and helped millions of African people affected by the famine.

In, “Bob Geldoff: Africa's Champion” the reader is exposed to an average person with average life who turns out to impact the world in an incredible way. The heroe in this book was not a person that was born a hero but someone that became a hero because he cares for people and could not spend another day living his life knowing that their were millions of African families dying from hunger. The reader appreciated that it only takes passion, courage and persistence to accomplish the impossible. If Bob told himself that this was nature's cruelty and that he as just an individual with severe money problems even to take care of his family could not do anything for the famine victims, Millions of people would have perished and he would have never realized the power of even one determined person can do to change the world.

I would highly recommend this book to other readers. This book teaches the reader on the power that we have inside if we choose to use it for good and not just selfish needs. Even though this famine was an act of nature, Bob did not shy away from trying to help people that he knew nothing about all the ay in Africa. This book is about the love for other human being even if you don't know them and they are not related to you like your own family. It is a lesson on selfless dedication to saving lives even at a time where you are struggling with your own life. The reader would have a new role model after reading this book and will most likely use him to plan their own lives.