Owen abroad

Thanks for picking up on this list – I’m always interested to see what recommendations people make, and I like the breakdown into different categories. It’s such a big topic that getting our heads around the whole lot can be pretty difficult.

I would replace Easterly’s ‘White Man’s Burden’ with his ‘Elusive Quest for Growth’, which I thought was a bit better at exploring the difficulties and frustrations of working in the aid industry, and was generally a better read.

I would add Gregory Clark’s ‘A Farewell to Alms’ which gives a convincing overview of the economic history of the world. It’s bound to be wrong, at least in parts (what book with such a large scope isn’t?) but understanding where we have come from is really important for getting a framework to think about aid.

Finally, I would also add David Keen’s ‘Complex Emergencies’. Partly because he taught me, but also because war, famine, crime and natural disasters are a big part of what keeps people poor, and solving and coping with these problems requires us to understand them.

Would you have added anything to it yourself?

I’d add “The blue sweater” by Jacqueline Novogratz. It’s wholly a different type of book from the others – more of an autobiography – but at its hear it explains how she arrived at the social entrepreneurial approach to aid and development and how that approaches integrates provate sector ideas and tools into development in order to foster greater empowerment and dignity for those that aid is designed to assist.