Recommended Reading The following is not an exhaustive list

							Recommended Reading
The following is not an exhaustive list- simply a list of a maximum of 15 titles on each topic
with ‘highly recommended’ ratings by EWB national office. An attempt has been made to
represent varied perspectives on each topic. This is a living document and will be updated
on an ongoing basis. Topics to be added are ‘Management and Development’ and ‘EWB
sector specific’.
                          Development Approach and Poverty

• Poverty and Development: Into the 21st Century by Tim Allen and Allan Thomas, 2000
A useful textbook covering the basics of development and poverty.

• The No-Nonsense Guide to International Development by Maggie Black, 2007
A concise examination of international development, its history and current challenges which
includes useful statistics.

• Whose Reality Counts: Putting the First Last by Robert Chambers, 1997
In this work, Robert Chambers, the forefather of participatory development approaches, calls on
all development professionals to adopt new methods to interacting and learning that empower
the world's poor.

• Bottom Billion : Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done
about It by Paul Collier, 2007
Paul Collier states in this book that global poverty is actually falling quite rapidly for about
eighty percent of the world. He says that the real crisis lies in a group of about 50 failing states,
the bottom billion, whose problems defy traditional approaches to alleviating poverty. In The
Bottom Billion, Collier contends that these fifty failed states pose the central challenge of the
developing world in the twenty-first century.

• The Critical Villager: Beyond Community Participation by Eric Dudley, 1993
Considers the difficulties of providing effective development aid to the Third World. The high
rate of failure in aid projects is often ascribed to inadequate consideration of local culture and
conditions. Eric Dudley considers how community-based technical aid can be made more
effective and sustainable. A must read regarding approach to development

• The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffrey Sachs, 2008
While many claim it an impossibility, Sachs's latest work not only asserts that the elimination of
extreme poverty is possible, but that it can be accomplished by 2025. In this work he delineates
how this can be achieved and what people living in the West can do to contribute.

• The No-Nonsense Guide to World Poverty by Jeremy Seabrook, 2007
Jeremy Seabrook looks at the broad effects of poverty worldwide and the inseperability of
poverty and wealth.

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• Development As Freedom by Amartya Sen, 2000
This groundbreaking work challenges popular understandings of development by explaining
economic development not as an end, but rather a means to extending freedoms. Excellent for
engineers learning about the approach to development.

                Social Entrepreneurship (Sub-topic to development approach)

• How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas by
David Bornstein, 2007
"Social entrepreneurs" are to social change what business entrepreneurs are to the economy.
Aimed at the general reader, this text presents inspiring accounts of dozens of individuals
around the world who have stepped in to solve problems where governments and bureaucracies
have failed. How to Change the World provides a close look at numerous people from several
countries who have advanced systemic change and shifted behaviour patterns and perceptions.
They have ideas for attacking problems, Bornstein points out, and are unwilling to rest until
they have spread their ideas throughout society.

• Creating a World without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism
by Muhammad Yunus, 2007
Yunus presents the idea about social business- where the creative vision of the entrepreneur is
applied to today's most serious problems: feeding the poor, housing the homeless, healing the
sick, and protecting the planet.
Creating a World Without Poverty tells the stories of some of the earliest examples of social
businesses, including Yunus's own Grameen Bank. It reveals the next phase in a hopeful
economic and social revolution that is already under way—and in the worldwide effort to
eliminate poverty by unleashing the productive energy of every human being.

                                 Economics, Aid and Trade

• The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in
the Tropics by William Easterly, 2001
Easterly argues that lower standards of living in developing countries are not the failure of
economics, but the failure to apply economic principle to practical policy work. In this book,
Easterly shows how these solutions all violate the basic principle of economics, that people-
private individuals and businesses, government officials, even aid donors-respond to incentives.
Written in an accessible, at times irreverent, style, Easterly's book combines modern growth
theory with anecdotes from his fieldwork for the World Bank.

• 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, 2006
A critical look at the West's economic policies for the world's poor. This is also going to be a full-
length documentary in 2010 by director Douglas Busby.

• Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working by Dambisa Moyo, 2009
In the past fifty years, more than $1 trillion in development-related aid has been transferred
from rich countries to Africa. Has this assistance improved the lives of Africans? No. In fact,
across the continent, the recipients of this aid are not better off as a result of it, but worse—much
worse. In Dead Aid, Dambisa Moyo describes the state of postwar development policy in Africa
today and unflinchingly confronts one of the greatest myths of our time: that billions of dollars



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in aid sent from wealthy countries to developing African nations has helped to reduce poverty
and increase growth.

• Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins, 2005
A book about international, corporate and governmental corruption. It gives a first-hand
account of how countries are being cheated out of trillions of dollars and provides an alternative
perspective on well-known international economic and political events.

• Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher, 1973
Schumacher pioneered the concept of low cost, appropriate, small-scale development ideas to
help people to help themselves.

• Freedom from Want: The Remarkable Success Story of BRAC, the Global
Grassroots Organization That's Winning the Fight Against Poverty by Ian Smillie,
2009
Freedom From Want traces BRAC's evolution from a small relief operation indistinguishable
from hundreds of others, into what is undoubtedly the largest and most variegated social
experiment in the developing world. BRAC's story shows how social enterprise can trump
corruption and how purpose, innovation and clear thinking can overcome the most entrenched
injustices that society can offer.

• The Alms Bazaar: Altruism Under Fire by Ian Smillie, 1995
As the former head of CUSO, Ian Smillie examines international development NGOs—their
historical evolution, the challenges they face and the lessons they have learned—and speculates
on their future.

• Mastering the Machine Revisited: Poverty, Aid and Technology by Ian Smillie,
2000
An introduction to appropriate technologies—a must-read for anyone interested in EWB's work
overseas and the role of western engineers in development.

• Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz, 2003
This rare glimpse behind the doors of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund
by Nobel Prize Winner Joseph Stiglitz, has provoked heated debate surrounding the role of these
powerful institutions in development.

• Economic Development by Michael Todaro, 2008
The publisher calls this the leading textbook in this field, providing a complete and balanced
introduction to the requisite theory, the driving policy issues, and the latest research.

                            Historical and Political Analysis

• Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, 1999
Jared Diamond argues that both geography and the environment played major roles in
determining the shape of the modern world. This argument runs counter to the usual theories
that cite biology as the crucial factor. Diamond claims that the cultures that were first able to
domesticate plants and animals were then able to develop writing skills, as well as make
advances in the creation of government, technology, weaponry, and immunity to disease.




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• Road to Riches or the Wealth of Man by Peter Jay, 2000
Road to Riches is the story of the rise and fall of whole economies and nations, and the ascent of
man as the only economic animal - as producer, consumer and accumulator of wealth. Ideas
about the story of the wealth of man are constantly changing. Peter Jay explains how the
economic machine works and how far beyond our control it really is.

• The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by David Landes, 1999
David S. Landes offers a sweeping look at the complex interplay between wealth and cultures -
across the centuries and around the world. This book explores historical puzzles such as how
China, so far ahead of the West for millennia, lost out to Western industrialism and why
geographically strategic and lush regions like Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa still lag
behind more developed nations.

• Future Positive: International Cooperation in the 21st Century by Michael
Edwards, 2001
Edwards calls for a new international order in which intervention is replaced with international
co-operation.

             Focus on Africa - Research, Personal Stories, or Fiction

•The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence by Martin Meredith,
2005
An epic biography of post-colonial Africa, and illuminating insight into its current devastating
problems, by one of its most authoritative scholars

• Nine Hills to Nambonkaha by Sarah Erdman, 2004
Peace Corp volunteer, Sarah Erdman shares her experiences working in Côte d'Ivoire. She
recounts life, death, celebration and survival in the rural community of Nambonkaha.

• Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski, 2002
Ryszard Kapuscinski arrived in Africa in 1957, at the beginning of the end of colonial rule––the
“sometimes dramatic and painful, sometimes enjoyable and jubilant” rebirth of a continent. The
Shadow of the Sun sums up the author’s experiences (“the record of a forty-year marriage”) in
this place that became the central obsession of his remarkable career.

• The World's Banker by Sebastian Mallaby, 2006
Journalist Sebastian Mallaby recounts his years spent at the World Bank when James
Wolfenson was President. This easy and engaging work reveals the inner-most-workings of the
World Bank.

• 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa by Stephanie Nolen, 2007
For six years, Stephanie Nolen has traced AIDS across Africa, and 28 is the result: an
unprecedented, uniquely human portrait of the continent in crisis. Through anecdotal stories,
she brings to life men, women, and children involved in every aspect of the pandemic, making
them familiar to us in a way they never have been before. In the process, she explores the effects
of an epidemic that well exceeds the Black Plague in scope, and the reasons why people must
care about what happens.




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• An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action for the Twenty-First Century by
James Orbinski, 2009
James Orbinski is past international president of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without
Borders, and accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for MSF in 1999. Having seen things we hope never
to see, confronted suffering, dispassion, and evil we hope never to encounter, James Orbinski
still believes in “the good we can be if we so choose.” Recounting stories from his own
experience, embodied in which are warnings, hope, and lessons in how we can inject
humanitarian activity into our lives, An Imperfect Offering is invaluable reading for anyone who
feels he or she can make a difference.

• Out of Poverty and Into Something More Comfortable by John Stackhouse, 2000
Stackhouse, an award winning Globe and Mail reporter, spent the 1990s traveling to some of the
poorest villages in South Asia and Africa where he wrote about the daily struggles of the
communities he visited, powerfully describing the people who have gained a voice and control
over their own lives as they struggle out of poverty.

•Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty by
Muhammad Yunus
Banker to the Poor is Muhammad Yunus's memoir of how he decided to change his life in order
to help the world's poor. In it he traces the intellectual and spiritual journey that led him to
fundamentally rethink the economic relationship between rich and poor, and the challenges he
and his colleagues faced in founding Grameen. He also provides wise, hopeful guidance for
anyone who would like to join him in "putting homelessness and destitution in a museum so
that one day our children will visit it and ask how we could have allowed such a terrible thing to
go on for so long."

• Nervous Conditions Tsitsi Dangarembga, 2004 (Fiction)
 This stunning first novel, set in colonial Rhodesia during the 1960s, centers on the coming of
age of a teenage girl, Tambu, and her relationship with her British-educated cousin Nyasha.
Tambu, who yearns to be free of the constraints of her rural village, especially the circumscribed
lives of the women, thinks her dreams have come true when her wealthy uncle offers to sponsor
her education. But she soon learns that the education she receives at his mission school comes
with a price. At the school she meets the worldly and rebellious Nyasha, who is chafing under
her father's authority. Raised in England, Nyasha is so much a stranger among her own people
that she can no longer speak her native language. Tambu can only watch as her cousin, caught
between two cultures, pays the full cost of alienation.

• Anthills of the Savannah, Chinua Achebe, 1987 (Fiction)
Anthills of the Savannah tells the story of three schoolmates who become major figures in a new
regime in the fictional West African land of Kangan. Achebe addresses the course unbridled
power often takes and demonstrates how the fierce pursuit of self-interest comes at tremendous
cost to the community as a whole.

•Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe, 1958 (Fiction)
The 1958 novel chronicles the life of Okonkwo, the leader of an Igbo (Ibo) community, from the
events leading up to his banishment from the community for accidentally killing a clansman,
through the seven years of his exile, to his return. Addresses the problem of the intrusion in the
1890s of white missionaries and colonial government into tribal Igbo society, and describes the
simultaneous disintegration of its protagonist Okonkwo and of his village. The novel was praised
for its intelligent and realistic treatment of tribal beliefs and of psychological disintegration



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coincident with social unraveling. Things Fall Apart helped create the Nigerian literary
renaissance of the 1960s.

For a list of African literature:
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/lit.html

•African Development: Making sense of the Issues and Actors, by Todd J. Moss, 2007
In the ongoing battle against global poverty, the countries of Africa continue to present the
greatest challenge. African Development offers a comprehensive introduction to the issues,
actors, and institutions interacting across the diverse continent.
Each chapter is organized around three fundamental questions: Where are we now? How did we
get to this point? What are the current debates? Interspersed throughout are vivid sidebars
acquainting the student with ten well-known "big men" and ten equally important but lesser
known African actors. The text also includes the ABCs of development jargon.


•African Poverty at the Millennium: Causes, Complexities and Challenges, Howard
White and Tony Killick for The World Bank, 2001
The analysis found in Part I of this book, emphasizes the many-sided nature of poverty and the
importance of going beyond generalizations about the poor. Part II looks at the various causes of
poverty in Africa, stressing the powerful ill-effects of a combination of sluggish past economic
growth and large, possibly widening, inequalities. It also draws attention to the strength of the
social and political factors contributing to poverty. Part III outlines an anti-poverty strategy,
highlighting the necessity for an inclusive and far-reaching approach, on the basis of joint action
by concerned governments and donors.




                                  Fair Trade and Advocacy

•Fair Trade Coffee: The Prospects and Pitfalls of Market-Driven Social Justice by
Gavin Fridell, 2007
Fridell argues that while local level analysis is important, examining the impacts of broader
structures on fair trade coffee networks, and vice versa, are of equal if not greater significance in
determining its long-term developmental potential. Using fair trade groups in Mexico and
Canada as case studies, Fridell examines fair trade coffee at both the global and local level,
assessing it as a development project and locating it within political and development theory.

•Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival by Daniel Jaffee,
2007
Fair trade is a fast-growing alternative market intended to bring better prices and greater social
justice to small farmers around the world. But is it working? This vivid study of coffee farmers in
Mexico offers the first thorough investigation of the social, economic, and environmental
benefits of fair trade.

•Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development by Joseph E. Stiglitz and
Andrew Charlton, 2001
Stiglitz and Charlton address one of the key issues facing world leaders today--how can the
poorer countries of the world be helped to help themselves through freer, fairer trade? To
answer this question, the authors put forward a new model for managing trading relationships

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between the richest and the poorest countries. Their approach is designed to open up markets in
the interests of all nations and not just the most powerful economies, to ensure that trade
promotes development, and to minimize the costs of adjustments. Beginning with a brief history
of the World Trade Organization and its agreements, the authors explore the issues and events
which led to the failure of 2003 Cancun summit and the obstacles that face the successful
completion of the Doha Round of negotiations. Finally they spell out the reforms and principles
upon which a successful agreement must be based.


    = Highly recommended




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