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Recommendations based on The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About Itby Paul Collier
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty
by Abhijit V. Banerjee
Examines global poverty from economic, social and political perspectives and offers strategies to reduce it.
Winner of the 2011, Financial Times,/Goldman Sachs Best Business Book of the Year Award Billions of government dollars, and thousands of charitable organizations and NGOs, are dedicated to helping ... (Goodreads)
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
by Philip Gourevitch
True story of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and its aftermath, told through the eyes of survivors.
In April of 1994, the government of Rwanda called on everyone in the Hutu majority to kill everyone in the Tutsi minority. Over the next three months, 800,000 Tutsis were murdered in the most ... (Goodreads)
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
by Daron Acemoğlu
Examination of the economic and political forces that shape the success and failure of nations.
Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail, answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health ... (Goodreads)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
by Jared Diamond
Tracing the origins of human civilizations through the lens of geography, technology, and biology.
"Diamond has written a book of remarkable scope ... one of the most important and readable works on the human past published in recent years." Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a national bestseller: ... (Goodreads)
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
by Jared Diamond
Study of past societies' successes and failures in terms of environmental, economic, and political decisions.
Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid ... (Goodreads)
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time
by Greg Mortenson
A man's mission to build schools in remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan to promote peace.
The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban’s backyard Anyone who despairs of the individual’s ... (Goodreads)
Orthodoxy
by G.K. Chesterton
An exploration of the spiritual and moral foundations of Christianity.
This book is meant to be a companion to "Heretics," and to put the positive side in addition to the negative. Many critics complained of the book because it merely criticised current philosophies ... (Goodreads)
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
by William McDonough
A revolutionary approach to design, advocating for products that can be reused or recycled indefinitely, creating a sustainable and regenerative economy.
"Reduce, reuse, recycle," urge environmentalists; in other words, do more with less in order to minimize damage. But as architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart point out in this ... (Goodreads)
Thinking, Fast and Slow
by Daniel Kahneman
An exploration of the two systems of the mind, and how they influence decision-making.
In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow , Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and ... (Goodreads)
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
by Jane Jacobs
Exposes the flaws of urban planning, advocating for a more organic approach.
A direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment of the short-sightedness and intellectual arrogance that has characterized much of urban planning in this century, The Death and Life of Great ... (Goodreads)
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
by Charles C. Mann
A fascinating account of the global changes that occurred after Columbus' voyage, including the exchange of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old and New Worlds.
From the author of 1491—the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas—a deeply engaging new history of the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 ... (Goodreads)
The Places in Between
by Rory Stewart
A pilgrimage across Afghanistan, uncovering the country's forgotten history.
Stewart arrives in Afghanistan in January 2002, beginning his journey in Herat and proceeding on foot to Kabul . He is initially accompanied by two armed guards, Qasim and Abdul Haq, at the ... (Wikipedia)
The Imitation of Christ
by Thomas à Kempis
A spiritual guidebook advocating turning away from worldly concerns and focusing on the divine.
Only the Bible has been more influential as a source of Christian devotional reading than The Imitation of Christ. This meditation on the spiritual life has inspired readers from Thomas More and St. ... (Goodreads)
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
by Thomas L. Friedman
An exploration of the rapid globalization of the world, and the implications of this shift.
When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, and they come to the chapter Y2K to March 2004 , what will they say was the most crucial development? The attacks on the World ... (Goodreads)
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
by Paulo Freire
Analysis of the educational system, advocating a pedagogy of liberation.
First published in Portuguese in 1968, Pedagogy of the Oppressed was translated and published in English in 1970. The methodology of the late Paulo Freire has helped to empower countless impoverished ... (Goodreads)
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
by Tracy Kidder
A story of one man's journey to fight poverty, illness, and injustice around the world.
At the center of Mountains Beyond Mountains stands Paul Farmer. Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, ... (Goodreads)
A Brief History of Time
by Stephen Hawking
Exploring the depths of time and space and the emergence of the universe.
In the ten years since its publication in 1988, Stephen Hawking's classic work has become a landmark volume in scientific writing, with more than nine million copies in forty languages sold ... (Goodreads)
Democracy in America
by Alexis de Tocqueville
A study of the political and social structure of the United States and its implications.
Democracy in America has had the singular honor of being even to this day the work that political commentators of every stripe refer to when they seek to draw large conclusions about the society of ... (Goodreads)
The Hero With a Thousand Faces
by Joseph Campbell
Mythology and folklore of the world explored, illustrating a universal hero's journey.
The first popular work to combine the spiritual and psychological insights of modern psychoanalysis with the archetypes of world mythology, the book creates a roadmap for navigating the frustrating ... (Goodreads)
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
by Peter Thiel
A guide to launching a startup, exploring the power of entrepreneurship.
If you want to build a better future, you must believe in secrets. The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, ... (Goodreads)
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
by Ashlee Vance
A revealing look into the life and accomplishments of tech innovator Elon Musk.
Elon Musk, the entrepreneur and innovator behind SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, sold one of his internet companies, PayPal, for $1.5 billion. Ashlee Vance captures the full spectacle and arc of the ... (Goodreads)
How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking
by Jordan Ellenberg
A journey through the power of mathematical thinking, and how it can be applied to everyday life.
The, Freakonomics, of math — a math-world superstar unveils the hidden beauty and logic of the world and puts its power in our hands The math we learn in school can seem like a dull set of rules, ... (Goodreads)
Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data
by Charles Wheelan
Practical guide to understanding statistics, illuminating how vital it is to everyday life.
Once considered tedious, the field of statistics is rapidly evolving into a discipline Hal Varian, chief economist at Google, has actually called “sexy.” From batting averages and political polls to ... (Goodreads)
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
by Michelle Alexander
Exploring the roots and reality of systemic racism in the U.S. criminal justice system.
"Jarvious Cotton's great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting ... (Goodreads)
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
by James C. Collins
A guide to building a successful company, examining the practices and values of leading organizations.
To find the keys to greatness, Collins's 21-person research team read and coded 6,000 articles, generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and created 384 megabytes of computer data in ... (Goodreads)
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
by Christopher Hitchens
Criticism of organized religion, arguing it is the root of much suffering in the world.
With his unique brand of erudition and wit, Hitchens describes the ways in which religion is man-made. "God did not make us," he says. "We made God." He explains the ways in which religion is ... (Goodreads)
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
by Ishmael Beah
A gripping tale of a child soldier's journey to survive and reclaim his humanity.
My new friends have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life.,"Why did you leave Sierra Leone?","Because there is a war.","You mean, you saw people running around with guns and ... (Barnes & Noble)
How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling
by Frank Bettger
A businessman's story of his journey from failure to success in sales.
A business classic endorsed by Dale Carnegie, How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling is for anyone whose job it is to sell. Whether you are selling houses or mutual funds, ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A study of the role of randomness in life, and how it can lead to unexpected events.
A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear ... (Goodreads)
Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States
by Bill Bryson
A comprehensive look at the history and evolution of the English language in America.
In Made in America , Bill Bryson de-mythologizes his native land, explaining how a dusty hamlet with neither woods nor holly became Hollywood; how the Wild West wasn't won; why Americans say ... (Goodreads)
