Review by Choice Review
Prominent economist Sachs (Columbia Univ.) does not lack for ambition. His goal is to end global poverty, preferably within his own lifetime. He makes the case that ending global poverty is not only desirable and necessary, but perfectly possible--and he provides a political and economic road map to get there. The book is a sandwich: the bread that holds it together is an essay in persuasion that examines the nature and causes of global poverty and presents a short list of principles and basic policies that can help overcome barriers to growth and greater equality. Sachs calculates the resource cost of addressing global poverty and concludes, as others have done before, that it is well within human means, if only it is made a priority. First-person accounts of Sachs's experience as a development economist in Africa, Bolivia, Poland, Russia, China, and India are the sandwich filling. The book's scope is broad--so broad that experts must necessarily fault it for its relative simplicity. But much of the educated world remains uninformed or underinformed about global poverty, so the effective audience for this message is huge. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Public, academic, lower-division undergraduate and up, and professional library collections. M. Veseth University of Puget Sound
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Sachs, economist and advisor to the UN, offers a blueprint for eliminating--by 2025--the hunger and extreme poverty responsible for millions around the world dying because of disease and lack of drugs. With a foreward by rock star Bono, this book tells how to achieve the goal of a world safe from poverty and the terrorism it feeds. He explains how to fight disease, promote good science and universal education, put into place critical infrastructure, and help the poorest global citizens. Noting that aid from the U.S. constitutes a very small percentage of its GNP, Sachs challenges the U.S. to transfer part of its military budget to global security through economic development and calls on the wealthiest Americans to provide extra assistance. This is an 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. --Mary Whaley Copyright 2005 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Sachs came to fame advising "shock therapy" for moribund economies in the 1980s (with arguably positive results); more recently, as director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, he has made news with a plan to end global "extreme poverty"Awhich, he says, kills 20,000 people a dayAwithin 20 years. While much of the plan has been known to economists and government leaders for a number of years (including Kofi Annan, to whom Sachs is special advisor), this is Sachs's first systematic exposition of it for a general audience, and it is a landmark book. For on-the-ground research in reducing disease, poverty, armed conflict and environmental damage, Sachs has been to more than 100 countries, representing 90% of the world's population. The book combines his practical experience with sharp professional analysis and clear exposition. Over 18 chapters, Sachs builds his case carefully, offering a variety of case studies, detailing small-scale projects that have worked and crunching large amounts of data. His basic argument is that "[W]hen the preconditions of basic infrastructure (roads, power, and ports) and human capital (health and education) are in place, markets are powerful engines of development." In order to tread "the path to peace and prosperity," Sachs believes it is encumbant upon successful market economies to bring the few areas of the world that still need help onto "the ladder of development." Writing in a straightfoward but engaging first person, Sachs keeps his tone even whether discussing failed states or thriving ones. For the many who will buy this book but, perhaps, not make it all the way through, chapters 12 through 14 contain the blueprint for Sachs's solution to poverty, with the final four making a rigorous case for why rich countries (and individuals) should collectively undertake itAand why it is affordable for them to do so. If there is any one work to put extreme poverty back onto the global agenda, this is it. (Mar. 21) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Economist and UN Special Advisor Sachs convincingly proposes a means to ending extreme poverty (defined here as a per capita income of less than $1 per day-a standard one-fifth of the world's population meets) by 2025. He presents a carefully constructed plan for improving local infrastructure, education, healthcare, technology, and other such needs in poor countries, all for a mere annual cost of .7 percent of the world's wealthiest nations' incomes. In this way, he argues, long-term sustainable economic development can be fostered. Sachs is no bleeding-heart liberal-he sees Third World sweatshops as opportunities to improve on even more egregious conditions and prescribes for poor nations a program of free-enterprise capitalism once the basic groundwork of his proposal has been laid. What's more, he claims that extreme poverty is already being eliminated through investment, trade, and free enterprise in countries such as China, India, and Bangladesh. It is in the self-interest of wealthy nations, Sachs insists, to end extreme poverty, as such action would expand the world economy while eliminating the breeding grounds for disease, civil unrest, and terrorism. This informative and impassioned work is highly recommended for all libraries.-Lawrence R. Maxted, Gannon Univ., Erie, PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Must the poor be with us always? Probably. But there are degrees of have-notness, and, argues UN special advisor Sachs, "extreme poverty can be ended not in the time of our grandchildren, but in our time." The poor, even the one billion poorest of them, are not necessarily fated to be so. In early modern times, much of the world lived at much the same economic level, which explains why European explorers could have been impressed by the sumptuousness of places such as Timbuktu and Tenochtitlan. But after 1800, writes Sachs, "both population and per capita income came unstuck, soaring at rates never before seen or even imagined." The West outstripped the rest of the world over the space of the next 200 years, creating a vast gulf between rich and poor nations, the product of uneven patterns of growth that have many causes. Some of them are social and political; it is difficult, for instance, to foster growth when corrupt officials skim the cream, ethnic hatreds mark one group or another as outcast, and people reproduce too quickly. Some of them are also geographic; farming on exhausted soil and mining tailings are recipes for disaster. ("Americans," Sachs exhorts, "forget that they inherited a vast continent rich in natural resources.") Taking issue with international-development economists concerned mostly with capital and credit formation, Sachs urges an account of poverty that takes a multifaceted view of the kinds of capital the poor lack (health, nutrition, infrastructure, biodiversity, an impartial judiciary, access to knowledge, and so forth). While agreeing with those economists that private initiatives are generally more effective than state programs, Sachs also proposes a many-pronged, needs-based attack on the worst extremes of poverty that requires, yes, the rich to help the poor, but that is eminently practical and minimally pipe-dreamy--and that, he notes in passing, would help restore the reputation of the US and the usefulness of the UN in the world. A solid, reasonable argument in which the dismal science offers a brightening prospect for the world's poor. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
