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The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
In the universally acclaimed and award-winning The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier reveals that fifty failed states--home to the poorest one billion people on Earth--pose the central challenge of the developing world in the twenty-first century. The book shines much-needed light on this group of small nations, largely unnoticed by the industrialized West, that are dropping further and further behind the majority of the world's people, often falling into an absolute decline in living standards. A struggle rages within each of these nations between reformers and corrupt leaders--and the corrupt are winning. Collier analyzes the causes of failure, pointing to a set of traps that ensnare these countries, including civil war, a dependence on the extraction and export of natural resources, and bad governance. Standard solutions do not work, he writes; aid is often ineffective, and globalization can actually make matters worse, driving development to more stable nations. What the bottom billion need, Collier argues, is a bold new plan supported by the Group of Eight industrialized nations. If failed states are ever to be helped, the G8 will have to adopt preferential trade policies, new laws against corruption, new international charters, and even conduct carefully calibrated military interventions. Collier has spent a lifetime working to end global poverty. In The Bottom Billion, he offers real hope for solving one of the great humanitarian crises facing the world today. "Terrifically readable." --Time.com "Set to become a classic. Crammed with statistical nuggets and common sense, his book should be compulsory reading." --The Economist "If Sachs seems too saintly and Easterly too cynical, then Collier is the authentic old Africa hand: he knows the terrain and has a keen ear.... If you've ever found yourself on one side or the other of those arguments--and who hasn't?--then you simply must read this book." --Niall Ferguson, The New York Times Book Review "Rich in both analysis and recommendations.... Read this book. You will learn much you do not know. It will also change the way you look at the tragedy of persistent poverty in a world of plenty." --Financial Times.
Price: $7.31
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How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It
Who formed the first modern nation? Who created the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. Mention of Scotland and the Scots usually conjures up images of kilts, bagpipes, Scotch whisky, and golf. But as historian and author Arthur Herman demonstrates, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland earned the respect of the rest of the world for its crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics—contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since. Arthur Herman has charted a fascinating journey across the centuries of Scottish history. He lucidly summarizes the ideas, discoveries, and achievements that made this small country facing on the North Atlantic an inspiration and driving force in world history. Here is the untold story of how John Knox and the Church of Scotland laid the foundation for our modern idea of democracy; how the Scottish Enlightenment helped to inspire both the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution; and how thousands of Scottish immigrants left their homes to create the American frontier, the Australian outback, and the British Empire in India and Hong Kong. How the Scots Invented the Modern World reveals how Scottish genius for creating the basic ideas and institutions of modern life stamped the lives of a series of remarkable historical figures, from James Watt and Adam Smith to Andrew Carnegie and Arthur Conan Doyle, and how Scottish heroes continue to inspire our contemporary culture, from William “Braveheart” Wallace to James Bond. Victorian historian John Anthony Froude once proclaimed, “No people so few in number have scored so deep a mark in the world’s history as the Scots have done.” And no one who has taken this incredible historical trek, from the Highland glens and the factories and slums of Glasgow to the California Gold Rush and the search for the source of the Nile, will ever view Scotland and the Scots—or the modern West—in the same way again. For this is a story not just about Scotland: it is an exciting account of the origins of the modern world and its consequences. “The point of this book is that being Scottish turns out to be more than just a matter of nationality or place of origin or clan or even culture. It is also a state of mind, a way of viewing the world and our place in it. . . . This is the story of how the Scots created the basic idea of modernity. It will show how that idea transformed their own culture and society in the eighteenth century, and how they carried it with them wherever they went. Obviously, the Scots did not do everything by themselves: other nations—Germans, French, English, Italians, Russians, and many others—have their place in the making of the modern world. But it is the Scots more than anyone else who have created the lens through which we see the final product. When we gaze out on a contemporary world shaped by technology, capitalism, and modern democracy, and struggle to find our place as individuals in it, we are in effect viewing the world as the Scots did. . . . The story of Scotland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is one of hard-earned triumph and heart-rending tragedy, spilled blood and ruined lives, as well as of great achievement.” —FROM THE PREFACE.
Price: $8.35
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Africa Doesn't Matter: How the West Has Failed the Poorest Continent and What We Can Do About It
Why is Africa still poor? What happens to the billions of aid dollars given yearly? Why do trade rules that fail African countries also cost us at the checkout line? Why doesnÕt Africa matter? In this engaging, jargon-free, reader-friendly guide, longtime aid worker and diplomat Giles Bolton offers his radical analysis of the problems Africa faces, drawing on years of experience on the ground. Dividing the book into five sectionsÑpoverty, aid, trade, globalization, and changeÑhe analyzes the issues, breaking them down with helpful features like sidebars and bullet points and humanizing them with stories about real people in Africa and anecdotes from his own years in the field. In a final section, he outlines what we as individuals can do to make a difference..
Price: $8.04
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Always Enough: God's Miraculous Provision among the Poorest Children on Earth
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The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World's Poorest Patients
An eye-opening look at Big Pharma's unethical and exploitative drug trials in the global south—the true story behind The Constant Gardener.Hailed by John le Carré as "an act of courage on the part of its author" and singled out for praise by the leading medical journals in the United States and the United Kingdom, The Body Hunters uncovers the real-life story behind le Carré's acclaimed novel The Constant Gardener and the recent feature film based on it. "A trenchant exposé...meticulously researched and packed with documentary evidence" ( Publishers Weekly), Sonia Shah's riveting journalistic account shines a much-needed spotlight on a disturbing new global trend. Drawing on years of original research and reporting in Africa and Asia, Shah examines how the multinational pharmaceutical industry, in its quest to develop lucrative drugs, has begun exporting its clinical research trials to the developing world, where ethical oversight is minimal and desperate patients abound. As the New England Journal of Medicine notes, "it is critical that those engaged in drug development, clinical research and its oversight, research ethics, and policy know about these stories," which tell of an impossible choice being faced by many of the world's poorest patients—be experimented upon or die for lack of medicine..
Price: $9.94
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Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India's Poorest Districts
In this thoroughly researched study of the poorest of the poor in India, we get to see how they manage, what sustains them, and the efforts, often ludicrous, to do something for them. The people who figure in this book tipify the lives and aspirations of a large section of the Indian society, and their stories present us with the true face of development. This is a reprint from 2002..
Price: $22.40
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Teresa of Calcutta: Serving the Poorest of the Poor (Sower Series) (Sower Series)
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Body Hunters: How the Drug Industry Tests Its Products On the World's Poorest Patients
An eye-opening look at Big Pharma's unethical and exploitative drug trials in the global South."Medical research imposes burdens But generally speaking, we don't like to know it….If the history of human experimentation tells us anything, from the bloody vivisections of the first millennium to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, it is that such burdens made secret will fall heaviest on the poorest and most powerless among us."—from The Body HuntersThis groundbreaking book reveals the unethical drug-testing practices of the multinational pharmaceutical industry. In its quest to develop lucrative new drugs for the world's rich, the industry has turned away from the health needs of the world's poor. And yet, over the past decade, Big Pharma has quietly exported its clinical research business to the global South, where ethical oversight is minimal, and sick, poor, and desperate patients are abundant. In The Body Hunters, investigative journalist Sonia Shah shows how the pharmaceutical industry is using testing procedures in the global South that would cause scandals in the developed world. In India, dozens of patients in drug trials have perished suffering deadly side effects known to the FDA; in Zambia, AIDS babies in clinical trials have been administered placebos. The Body Hunters is based on several years of original research and reporting from Africa and Asia, and describes dozens of trials, as well as the checkered history of Western medical science in poor countries..
Price: $10.82
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Social Protection for the Poor and Poorest: Risk, Needs and Rights (Palgrave Studies in Development)
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