Best Economic Development Books

Readers of Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think seeking engagement for all reading groups can gain further insight with this essential resource as a guide to aid your discussions.

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, generally referred to by its shortened title The Wealth of Nations, is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith.

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner offer the longawaited paperback edition of Freakonomics, the runaway bestseller, including six Freakonomics columns from the New York Times Magazine and a Q & A with the authors.Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming poolWhat do…

"The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph," writes Hernando de Soto, "is, in the eyes of fourfifths of humanity, its hour of crisis." In The Mystery of Capital, the worldfamous Peruvian economist takes up the question that, more than any other, is central to one of the most…

Nearly forty percent of humanity lives on an average of two dollars a day or less. If you've never had to survive on an income so small, it is hard to imagine.

In the universally acclaimed and awardwinning The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier reveals that fifty failed stateshome to the poorest one billion people on Earthpose the central challenge of the developing world in the twenty-first century.

First-person, anecdote-rich narrative that follows Yunus and the early Grameen Bank experiments, mixing operational detail with portraits of borrowers and grassroots problem-solving. Useful for getting a tangible sense of how microloans were delivered, the group-lending mechanics, and the personal conviction that drove the project. Limitation: recurring anecdotes and a consistently optimistic, sometimes polemical tone mean the book glosses over hard quantitative critique and can feel repetitive; readers wanting systematic, data-heavy evaluation will find it thin.

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is David S. Landes's acclaimed, bestselling exploration of one of the most contentious and hotly debated questions of our time: Why do some nations achieve economic success while others remain mired in poverty The answer, as Landes definitively…

Two prizewinning economists show how economics, when done right, can help us solve the thorniest social and political problems of our dayThe experience of the last decade has not been kind to the image of economists: asleep at the wheel (perhaps with the foot on the gas pedal)…

"Does a great job of bringing alive the complexities of poor people’s lives." - Bill Gates