**From one of the world’s best-known development economists—an excoriating attack on the tragic hubris of the West’s efforts to improve the lot of the so-called developing world."Brilliant at diagnosing the failings of Western intervention in the Third World." —BusinessWeek**In his previous book, The Elusive Quest for Growth, William Easterly criticized the utter ineffectiveness of Western organizations to mitigate global poverty, and he was promptly fired...

Over the 1980s and 1990s, most Latin American countries witnessed a retrenchment of the public sector away from infrastructure provision and an opening up of infrastructure activities to the private sector. This book analyzes the consequences of these policy changes from two perspectives. First, it reviews in a comparative framework the major trends in infrastructure provision in Latin America over the last two decades. Second, it evaluates the implication of these trends for economic grow...

A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR'AN INNOVATIVE AND EXHILARATING READ' Angus Deaton, winner of the Nobel Prize in EconomicsEconomic development is not really development without consent.For centuries, the developed Western world has exploited the less-developed 'Rest' in the name of progress, conquering the Americas, driving the Atlantic slave trade, and colonizing Africa and Asia. Through...

In this "bracingly iconoclastic” book (New York Times Book Review), a renowned economics scholar breaks down the fight to end global poverty and the rights that poor individuals have had taken away for generations.In The Tyranny of Experts, renowned economist William Easterly examines our failing efforts to fight global poverty, and argues that the "expert approved" top-down approach to development has not only made little lasting progress, but ha...

Foreign aid and overseas military intervention have been important and controversial political topics for over a decade. The government’s controversial target to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on foreign aid has been widely welcomed by some, but strongly criticised by others. Furthermore, the controversy of the Iraq war rumbles on, even today. This is all happening amongst much instability in many parts of the world. In this short book, a number of authors challenge the assumption t...

This book pulls together experts in the fields of economics and Russian culture, all participants in the Samuel P. Huntington Memorial Symposium on Culture, Cultural Change and Economic Development, a follow-up to the 1999 Cultural Values and Human Progress Symposium at Harvard University. As the sequel to the 2001 volume Culture Matters, it discusses modernization, democratization, economic, and political reforms in Russia and asserts that these reforms can happen through the reframing of...

A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR'AN INNOVATIVE AND EXHILARATING READ' Angus Deaton, winner of the Nobel Prize in EconomicsEconomic development is not really development without consent.For centuries, the developed Western world has exploited the less-developed 'Rest' in the name of progress, conquering the Americas, driving the Atlantic slave trade, and colonizing Africa and Asia. Through...

In this "bracingly iconoclastic” book (New York Times Book Review), a renowned economics scholar breaks down the fight to end global poverty and the rights that poor individuals have had taken away for generations.In The Tyranny of Experts, renowned economist William Easterly examines our failing efforts to fight global poverty, and argues that the "expert approved" top-down approach to development has not only made little lasting progress, but ha...

An award-winning mathematician—he "made me smile and made me feel clever" (Peter Frankopan)—shows how we prove what’s true, and what to do when we can’tHow do we establish what we believe? And how can we be certain that what we believe is true? And how do we convince other people that it is true? For thousands of years, from the ancient Greeks to the Arabic golden age to the modern world, science has used different methods—logical, empirical, intuitive, and more—to...

WINNER OF THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE 2025A FINANCIAL TIMES, BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE AND HISTORY TODAY BOOK OF THE YEARThe definitive history of the sixteenth-century uprising that revolutionized Europe.The German Peasants' War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as thousands of people...

**NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYBloomberg • Forbes • The SpectatorRecipient of Foreign Policy's 2013 Albie Award**A powerful portrayal of Jeffrey Sachs's ambitious quest to end global poverty"The poor you will always have with you," to cite the Gospel of Matthew 26:11. Jeffrey Sachs—celebrated economist, special advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations, and author of the influential bestseller ...

The story of the greatest of all philosophical friendships—and how it influenced modern thoughtDavid Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime he was attacked as "the Great Infidel" for his skeptical religious views and deemed unfit to teach the young. In contrast, Adam Smith was a revered professor of moral philosophy, and is now often hailed as the founding father of capitalism. Remarkably, the two...