Book examines plight of poor

If you're looking for pictures of exotic places that will give you a warm and comfy feeling, don't count on Howard Buffett's new book, “Fragile: the Human Condition.”

The book by one of Warren Buffett's sons, who is a director of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is intended to shed understanding on problems facing the world's poor.

“Fragile” ($35, 320 pages, National Geographic) marries Buffett's photography, including some images dating to his childhood, with accounts of tragedy and triumph, danger and decency, poverty and perseverance in 65 countries.

Many of Buffett's travels are with international aid organizations that his foundation helps fund.

“There are real stories that go with the photographs,” Howard Buffett said. “I'd seen enough and talked to enough people and learned enough that I needed to tell the story.”

Buffett said he has learned through his charitable projects that some projects work and others don't. If there's success, he said, “you really transform their lives from despair to hope.”

His status as a famous man's son opens many doors. The book contains an introduction by former Coca-Cola President Donald Keough, an epilogue by humanitarian and music superstar Bono and a foreword by Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, the singer and dancer best known by her first name.

“Some of these extraordinary photos make you smile; some make you cry,” Bono writes. “All of them inspire you to take action against the injustice of extreme poverty. Howie's portraits are more than beautiful pictures and compelling stories — they are the reason why we must not rest in the comfort of our freedom.”

Bono calls Buffett “a protagonist for change,” which is the goal of the book and of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.

The pace of the foundation's projects quickened after his mother, Susan Thompson Buffett, died in 2004 and left $150 million to each of her three children's foundations. Warren Buffett also makes annual contributions of about $50 million to each foundation.

Howard Buffett, 54, has been taking photos since he was a child. Until the last several years, his photography projects concentrated on wildlife conservation. He said he gradually realized that the real danger was to many of the people living in the same countries.

Buffett's first international travel came at age 14, when he visited the home of a former exchange student from Czechoslovakia at a time when the Soviet Union controlled Eastern Europe. On some family outings, he pretended to take pictures of his host family but pointed his lens toward the soldiers and tanks.

Over the 40 years since, he has visited nearly 100 countries.

“We're in some pretty tough places,” he said, including Sudan, Bosnia and Liberia.

Often local authorities don't like to see pictures taken by Westerners. During the conflict in Darfur, Buffett said, he used a small throwaway camera to take pictures surreptitiously, keeping the camera in a potato chip bag so it wouldn't be confiscated. The resulting photos of military aircraft are grainy, but that's part of the story, Buffett said: Sometimes the truth is difficult to bring to light.

There are images of corpses from war and disaster, including immigrants who died trying to enter the United States from Mexico. There's a two-page spread on poverty in West Virginia.

Proceeds from sales of the book go to the United Nations World Food Programme, one of the projects Howard Buffett's foundation supports. National Geographic began selling the book in September, and starting this week Random House is marketing about 4,000 copies for the holiday season.

Buffett said his foundation has distributed thousands of copies for free, including books to every member of Congress, every U.S. governor and many libraries and universities.

He sent 500 copies to the October convention of the Future Farmers of America, a group that Buffett said is dear to his heart because he owns a working farm near his home in Decatur, Ill.

Many of his foundation's projects are designed to improve agriculture in developing countries.

In all, he figures about 8,500 copies are in circulation.

“It's kind of a shotgun approach,” Buffett said, aimed at inspiring present and future leaders to take action.

Is it working?

“It's very hard to measure the impact,” he said, but he has received letters from students who say the book has inspired them to focus their careers toward the issues he explores.

The book project took nearly two years and involved shooting new photos, sifting through thousands of others and matching them with real stories about the people photographed.

Buffett and his editors then organized the book's contents around the broad problems he encountered, such as malnutrition, war, immigration and natural disasters.

The objective is not to show pictures of people in poverty but to explain what had happened to them, what their lives are like, what their future might be and how their situations can be improved, he said.

Buffett writes in the book that he realizes if not for the luck of being born in the United States, he could have been one of those people looking at the camera instead of through the lens. That's a sentiment Warren Buffett also has often expressed.

Shakira, the singer, traveled with Buffett to her native Colombia in July 2008, stopping in some of that country's poorest sections.

In the foreword she writes: “There are sad pictures here, but look closely at the people in them. You will see their value, their strength and their beauty. See them the way Howard has seen them and find your own path to help.”

Contact the writer:

444-1080, steve.jordon@owh.com

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