Synopses & Reviews
Jeffrey D. Sachs has been cited by
The New York Times Magazine as andldquo;probably the most important economist in the worldandrdquo; and by
Time as andldquo;the worldandrsquo;s best-known economist.andrdquo; He has advised an extraordinary range of world leaders and international institutions on the full range of issues related to creating economic success and reducing the worldandrsquo;s poverty and misery. Now, at last, he draws on his entire twenty-five-year body of experience to offer a thrilling and inspiring big-picture vision of the keys to economic success in the world today and the steps that are necessary to achieve prosperity for all.
Marrying vivid eyewitness storytelling to his laserlike analysis, Jeffrey Sachs sets the stage by drawing a vivid conceptual map of the world economy and the different categories into which countries fall. Then, in a tour de force of elegance and compression, he explains why, over the past two hundred years, wealth has diverged across the planet in the manner that it has and why the poorest nations have been so markedly unable to escape the cruel vortex of poverty. The groundwork laid, he explains his methods for arriving, like a clinical internist, at a holistic diagnosis of a countryandrsquo;s situation and the options it faces. Rather than deliver a worldview to readers from on high, Sachs leads them along the learning path he himself followed, telling the remarkable stories of his own work in Bolivia, Poland, Russia, India, China, and Africa as a way to bring readers to a broad-based understanding of the array of issues countries can face and the way the issues interrelate. He concludes by drawing on everything he has learned to offer an integrated set of solutions to the interwoven economic, political, environmental, and social problems that most frequently hold societies back. In the end, he leaves readers with an understanding, not of how daunting the worldandrsquo;s problems are, but how solvable they areandmdash;and why making the effort is a matter both of moral obligation and strategic self-interest. A work of profound moral and intellectual vision that grows out of unprecedented real-world experience, The End of Poverty is a road map to a safer, more prosperous future for the world.
Review
"A solid, reasonable argument in which the dismal science offers a brightening prospect for the world's poor." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[A]n excellent, understandable book on a critical topic and should be required reading for students and participants in public policy as well as those who doubt the problem of world poverty can be solved." Booklist
Review
"This is a serious book by a serious man....He is especially stirring about the desperation of Africa." New Republic
Review
"Professor Sachs has provided a compelling blueprint for eliminating extreme poverty from the world by 2025. Sachs's analysis and proposals are suffused with all the practical experience of his twenty years in the field working in dozens of countries across the globe to foster economic development and well-being." George Soros, financier and philanthropist
Review
"It's a shame that Sachs's prescriptions are unconvincing because he is resoundingly right about the tragedy of world poverty." Washington Post
Review
"Book and man are brilliant, passionate, optimistic and impatient." The Economist
Review
"Jeffrey Sachs is that rare phenomenon: an academic economist famous for his theories about why some countries are poor and others rich, and also famous for his successful practical work in helping poor countries become richer. In this longawaited, fascinating, clearly and movingly written book, he distills his experience to propose answers to the hard choices now facing the world." Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse
Synopsis
From "probably the most important economist in the world" (The New York Times Magazine), legendary for his work around the globe on economies in crisis, comes a landmark exploration of the roots of economic prosperity and the path out of extreme poverty for the world's poorest citizens.
Synopsis
He has been cited by the
New York Times Magazine as "probably the most important economist in the world" and by
Time as "the world's best-known economist." He has advised an extraordinary range of world leaders and international institutions on the full range of issues related to creating economic success and reducing the world's poverty and misery. Now, at last, he draws on his entire twenty-five-year body of experience to offer a thrilling and inspiring big-picture vision of the keys to economic success in the world today and the steps that are necessary to achieve prosperity for all.
Marrying vivid eyewitness storytelling to his laserlike analysis, Jeffrey Sachs sets the stage by drawing a vivid conceptual map of the world economy and the different categories into which countries fall. Then, in a tour de force of elegance and compression, he explains why, over the past two hundred years, wealth has diverged across the planet in the manner that it has and why the poorest nations have been so markedly unable to escape the cruel vortex of poverty. The groundwork laid, he explains his methods for arriving, like a clinical internist, at a holistic diagnosis of a country's situation and the options it faces. Rather than deliver a worldview to readers from on high, Sachs leads them along the learning path he himself followed, telling the remarkable stories of his own work in Bolivia, Poland, Russia, India, China, and Africa as a way to bring readers to a broad-based understanding of the array of issues countries can face and the way the issues interrelate. He concludes by drawing on everything he has learned to offer an integrated set of solutions to the interwoven economic, political, environmental, and social problems that most frequently hold societies back. In the end, he leaves readers with an understanding, not of how daunting the world's problems are, but how solvable they are and why making the effort is a matter both of moral obligation and strategic self-interest. A work of profound moral and intellectual vision that grows out of unprecedented real-world experience, The End of Poverty is a road map to a safer, more prosperous future for the world.
Synopsis
A landmark exploration of the roots of economic prosperity and the escape from extreme poverty for the world's poorest citizens.
About the Author
Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From 2002 to 2006, he was Director of the United Nations Millennium Project and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by the year 2015. Sachs is also President and Cofounder of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization aimed at ending extreme global poverty.
Table of Contents
and#160;
andquot;Jeffrey Sachs is that rare phenomenon: an academic economist famous for his theories about why some countries are poor and others rich, and also famous for his successful practical work in helping poor countries become richer. In this long awaited, fascinating, clearly and movingly written book, he distills his experience to propose answers to the hard choices now facing the world.andquot; ?Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse and#160;
He has been cited by The New York Times Magazine as andquot;probably the most important economist in the worldandquot; and by Time as andquot;the world's best-known economist.andquot; He has advised an extraordinary range of world leaders and international institutions on the full range of issues related to creating economic success and reducing the world's poverty and misery. Now, at last, he draws on his entire twenty-five-year body of experience to offer a thrilling and inspiring big-picture vision of the keys to economic success in the world today and the steps that are necessary to achieve prosperity for all.
Marrying vivid eyewitness storytelling to his laserlike analysis, Jeffrey Sachs sets the stage by drawing a vivid conceptual map of the world economy and the different categories into which countries fall. Then, in a tour de force of elegance and compression, he explains why, over the past two hundred years, wealth has diverged across the planet in the manner that it has and why the poorest nations have been so markedly unable to escape the cruel vortex of poverty. The groundwork laid, he explains his methods for arriving, like a clinical internist, at a holistic diagnosis of a country's situation and the options it faces. Rather than deliver a worldview to readers from on high, Sachs leads them along the learning path he himself followed, telling the remarkable stories of his own work in Bolivia, Poland, Russia, India, China, and Africa as a way to bring readers to a broad-based understanding of the array of issues countries can face and the way the issues interrelate. He concludes by drawing on everything he has learned to offer an integrated set of solutions to the interwoven economic, political, environmental, and social problems that most frequently hold societies back. In the end, he leaves readers with an understanding, not of how daunting the world's problems are, but how solvable they are-and why making the effort is a matter both of moral obligation and strategic self-interest. A work of profound moral and intellectual vision that grows out of unprecedented real-world experience, The End of Poverty is a road map to a safer, more prosperous future for the world.
On the web: http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/endofpoverty/ and#160; The path from poverty to development has come incredibly fast in the span of human history. Two hundred years ago, the idea that we could potentially achieve the end of poverty would have been unimaginable. Just about everybody was poor with the exception of a very small minority of royals and landed gentry. Life was as difficult in much of Europe as it was in India or China. With very few exceptions, your great-great-grandparents were poor and most likely living on the farm. One leading economic historian, Angus Maddison, puts the average income per person in Western Europe in 1820 at around 90 percent of the average income of sub-Saharan Africa today. Life expectancy in Western Europe and Japan as of 1800 was probably about forty years.
There was little sense a few centuries ago of vast divides in wealth and poverty around the world. China, India, Europe, and Japan all had similar income levels at the time of European discoveries of the sea routes to Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Marco Polo, of course, marveled at the sumptuous wonders of China, not at its poverty. Cortandeacute;s and his conquistadores expressed astonishment at the riches of Tenochtitlandaacute;n, the capital of the Aztecs. The early Portuguese explorers in Africa were impressed with the well-ordered towns in West Africa.
Until the mid-1700s, the world was remarkably poor by any of todayandrsquo;s standards. Life expectancy was extremely low; children died in vast numbers in the now rich countries as well as the poor countries. Disease and epidemics, not just the black death of Europe, but many waves of disease, from smallpox and measles to other epidemics, regularly washed through society and killed mass numbers of people. Episodes of hunger and extreme weather and climate fluctuations sent societies crashing. The rise and fall of the Roman Empire, for Arnold Toynbee, was much like the rise and decline of all other civilizations before and since. Economic history had long been one of ups and downs, growth followed by decline, rather than sustained economic progress.
The Novelty of Modern Economic Growth
If we are to understand why vast gaps between rich and poor exist today, we need therefore to understand a very recent period of human history during which these vast gaps opened. The past two centuries, since around 1800, constitute a unique era in economic history, a period that the great economic historian Simon Kuznets famously termed the period of Modern Economic Growth, or MEG for short. Before the era of MEG, indeed for thousands of years, there had been virtually no sustained economic growth in the world and only gradual increases in the human populationandhellip;; and#160;
Acknowledgementsand#160;and#160; ix
Foreword by Bonoand#160;and#160; xv
Introductionand#160;and#160; 1
- Global Family Portraitand#160;and#160; 5
- The Spread of Economic Prosperityand#160;and#160; 26
- Why Some Countries Fail to Thriveand#160;and#160; 51
- Clinical Economicsand#160;and#160; 74
- Bolivia's High-Altitude Hyperinflationand#160;and#160; 90
- Poland's Return to Europeand#160;and#160; 109
- Reaping the Whirlwind: Russia's Struggle for Normalcyand#160;and#160; 131
- China: Catching Up After Half a Milleniumand#160;and#160; 148
- India's Market Reforms: The Triumph of Hope Over Fearand#160;and#160; 170
- The Voiceless Dying: Africa and Diseaseand#160;and#160; 188
- The Millennium, 9/11, and the United Nationsand#160;and#160; 210
- On-the-Ground Solutions for Ending Povertyand#160;and#160; 226
- Making the Investments Needed to End Povertyand#160;and#160; 244
- A Global Compact to End Povertyand#160;and#160; 266
- Can the Rich Afford to Help the Poor?and#160;and#160; 288
- Myths and Magic Bulletsand#160;and#160; 309
- Why We Should Do Itand#160;and#160; 329
- Our Generation's Challengeand#160;and#160; 347
Works Citedand#160;and#160; 369
Further Readingand#160;and#160; 372
Notesand#160;and#160; 376
Indexand#160;and#160; 385