Book Review: The White Man's Burden

If you are interested in development in any way (including in an armchair fashion), you must read this book. Snarky fun mixed with depressing stats to give an accurate and overall negative view of the traditional development industry.

Especially good is the chapter "Invading the Poor". Most of the foreign aid in the US is military; Easterly shows that such military aid is useless to harmful. Also good are the 'snapshots' beginning each chapter, showing real life issues -- anecdotal, but they put things in perspective.

The book is summed up in a paragraph close to the end:

Aid won't make poverty history, which Western aid efforts cannot possibly do. Only the self-reliant efforts of poor people and poor societies themselves can end poverty, borrowing ideas and institutions from the West when it suits them to do so. But aid that concentrates on feasible tasks will alleviate the sufferings of many desparate people in the meantime. Isn't that enough?

It's enough for me.