You may have come across reports about the violence surrounding the mining of the rare mineral coltan in Central Africa. It’s a source of the element tantalum, which is essential in the manufacture of cell phones and laptops. And about eighty percent of the world’s supply comes from...
Read More
For millennia, the huge peninsula we call India today has been Asia’s pivot. South of the central Asian steppes, midway between the European trade routes of the Middle East, the Chinese behemoth, and the East African coast, India has long been one of the most diverse places on the planet....
Read More
Humanity has wrested enough abundance out of Planet Earth to feed, clothe, and house every man, woman, and child in comfort. Why, then, do tiny numbers of ultra-wealthy people possess so much more than they could ever use or spend in a hundred lifetimes—while most of the rest of the human race...
Read More
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is one of the most highly praised novels of the past year. It’s the fiction debut of Deepa Anappara, an Indian journalist transposed to London. It seems likely that in other hands, the story she tells in this novel might well have wandered off into...
Read More
So, it turns out that street names and house numbers are a pretty big deal. We’ve only got them because of the troubled and sometimes violent circumstances that brought them into being. In fact, we tend to be ignorant of what addresses really mean. And while those of us who have addresses...
Read More
In the closing months of his life, as pancreatic cancer worked its painful way through his system, the legendary lecturer Hans Rosling (1948-2017) labored with his son and daughter-in-law to compile the lessons he had spent decades teaching about the state of the world. The result was this compact...
Read More
Few countries on Earth are more isolated than North Korea. The term “hermetically sealed” is often applied. And as a result few first-hand accounts of life in the hermit kingdom of the Kim Dynasty have made it into print in the West. Of those that have appeared in the United States,...
Read More
The Biltmore Estate sprawls across 8,000 acres in Asheville, North Carolina. With 179,000 square feet, the former residence of George Vanderbilt is the largest private home in the United States. Few private residences anywhere rival the sheer ostentation of the Biltmore Estate. Estimated reading...
Read More
The emergence of new nations out of a colonial past was one of the most significant developments of the 20th Century—if not the most important of all. Their uneven struggle to attain the comforts and possibilities of life to be found in Europe, North America, and Japan continues to loom large in...
Read More
One of the world’s enduring mysteries is why there is such a wide gap in prosperity between the developed nations and those so often referred to as “developing.” Two centuries ago, China was the world’s wealthiest nation, and many of today’s developed countries were...
Read More
No one but the most hard-bitten defender of U.S. foreign policy would deny that the United States dominates a global empire bigger than any other in human history and that we have employed highly questionable and often illegal means to build it. In The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,...
Read More
In an even reasonably rational world, In Their Own Hands would serve as the Bible for development professionals and the basic textbook for students, philanthropists, faith-based activists, and business executives who aspire to improve the lives of poor people. Though this book advocates a...
Read More
Planning based-approaches — so common across government, civil society, and even business — represent a neo-Soviet paradigm” and have long been shown to be at best minimally effective in fostering meaningful social change. If that assertion is a revelation to you, you’re...
Read More
This book is full of surprises. In The Tyranny of Experts, the author of the seminal book The White Man’s Burden drills down into the history of economic development around the world in search of its causes. What he finds has little to do with any of the factors bandied about among...
Read More
Has the human race made progress since the days when all our lives were nasty, brutish, and short? Some might think this question patently silly, since it would appear to answer itself. But Angus Deaton finds in it a point of entry into his inquiry on “health, wealth, and the origins of...
Read More
Some microfinance is extremely beneficial to the poor, but it is not the miracle cure that its publicists would have you believe. Microfinance has been hijacked by profiteers, and we need to reclaim it for the poor. The problem is not with a few rogue operators, alas, but with systemic flaws that...
Read More
It’s difficult even to dip your toes into the field of poverty without tripping over the Millennium Villages Project. So extensive has been the coverage of this ambitious – some would say hubristic – endeavor that scholars may spend years sifting through the documented record. But anyone curious...
Read More
As I’ve dug more deeply into the subject of global poverty in the course of writing The Business Solution to Poverty with Paul Polak, it has become increasingly clear to me that truly understanding how today’s glaring inequities have come about requires extensive knowledge in a wide array of...
Read More
A review of Pharmacy on a Bicycle: Innovative Solutions for Global Health and Poverty, by Eric C. Bing and Marc J. Epstein. @@@@ (4 out of 5). A leading global health authority and an eminent management professor explain how recent developments make it possible to deliver effective healthcare to the billions of the world’s poor now living in often-remote rural areas.
Read More
A review of Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. @@@@@ (5 out of 5). Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo seek a pragmatic path between the extreme positions advanced by economists Jeffrey Sachs and William Easterly. Sachs advocates massive foreign aid. Easterly asserts it does more harm than good.
Read More
Science Fiction Monday includes my latest SF book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.
Science Fiction Monday includes my latest SF book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.