One afternoon in 1976 an economics professor, taking a walk in a village in Bangladesh, met a poor woman. The woman was trying to support herself by constructing and selling bamboo stools. She earned two cents a day. When the professor asked her why her profit was so low, she explained that the only person who would lend her money to buy bamboo was the trader who purchased her final product and the price he set barely covered her costs.

The professor's instinct was to open his wallet and give her some money. Then he had another thought: Why not give her a loan?

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That thought became the genesis of a remarkable institution: the Grameen ("Village") Bank. Today, the Grameen Bank is considered the most successful self-sustaining antipoverty program in the world. It has more than two million borrowers - 94 percent of them women - and its approach has been replicated throughout the world, including in hundreds of locations across the United States and Canada.

The Price of a Dream traces the history of the Grameen Bank and in candid, vivid prose transports the reader to one of the world's most dramatic settings for a firsthand view of how this institution is helping millions of people change their lives.