Recommended Reading

• How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas by David Bornstein, Penguin Books, 2004
• The End of Poverty, Economic Possibilities for our Time by Jeffrey Sachs, Penguin Press, 2005
• The White Man's Burden, Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly, Penguin Press, 2006
• The Bottom Billion, Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier, Oxford University Press, 2007
• A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007
• Paradigm Found: Leading and Managing for Positive Change by Anne Firth Murray, New World Library, 2006
• Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. New York: Anchor Books, 2007.
• "World Development Report 2007: Development and the Next Generation" available 
  at WRD 2007

Half of a Yellow Sun

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. New York: Anchor Books, 2007.

This moving second book by this young award winning author (www.l3.ulg.ac.be/adichie/) describes the lives of five characters during the years before and during the Biafran war, illuminating an important period in African history. While only two of the five characters are women, the fact that a woman’s perspective is presented is notable and makes this beautifully written book even more powerful for the picture it provides of different perspectives on war and its wreckage for peoples lives. This talented writer has already won numerous prizes for her writing and was recently named a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellow for 2008. 
~Anne Petersen

This book should be a MUST read book for anyone interested in a perspective of one who was in the middle of the war. Her first book, Purple Hibiscus was simply and gem. Half of a Yellow Sun is just absolutely brilliant.
~Collins Airhihenbuwa

The Bottom Billion

The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Economist Paul Collier brings a new perspective to the string of recent economic analyses of global development, following from the important volumes by Jeffrey Sachs (The End of Poverty) and William Easterly (The White Man’s Burden), also discussing from very different perspectives the failures of foreign aid in redressing global development. Collier provides a data-based rational analysis of the various traps - hypotheses for causes of and remedies for global poverty. He focuses on the very poorest of nations, arguing that wealthier nations ignore these countries at our peril. Most of the book reviews the evidence for causes of poverty, concluding that four traps are primary causes: conflict (coups, civil war, etc), natural resources (eg oil, diamonds), being landlocked (and therefore lacking prospects for trade), and bad governance; in addition, he carefully maps the unfortunate interactions among these traps. In the concluding chapters, Collier proposes constructive approaches (rather than the current ones that make things worse). His book is very timely and the recommended approaches sensible and possible. This book made me realize that the most important aspect of globalization is mass communication, making it impossible to keep anyone ‘down on the farm.’ While there are many unfortunate legacies from the colonial past, the colonial tactics of suppression and control will not work for long on a population as those with personal resources will leave, and many of those remaining will die, literally or figuratively. Those of us who wish to improve life on this earth must grasp this new reality and play constructive roles now. Collier’s book provides thoughtful recommendations to do that.
~Anne Petersen