The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty [Unabridged] [Audible Audio Edition] Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00E9YYP36 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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A powerful portrayal of Jeffrey Sachs's ambitious quest to end global poverty
"The poor you will always have with you," to cite the Gospel of Matthew 26:11. Jeffrey Sachs - celebrated economist, special advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations, and author of the influential best seller The End of Poverty - disagrees. In his view, poverty is a problem that can be solved. With single-minded determination he has attempted to put into practice his theories about ending extreme poverty, to prove that the world's most destitute people can be lifted onto "the ladder of development."
In 2006, Sachs launched the Millennium Villages Project, a daring five-year experiment designed to test his theories in Africa. The first Millennium village was in Sauri, a remote cluster of farming communities in western Kenya. The initial results were encouraging. With his first taste of success, and backed by 120 million dollars from George Soros and other likeminded donors, Sachs rolled out a dozen model villages in ten sub-Saharan countries. Once his approach was validated it would be scaled up across the entire continent. At least that was the idea.
For the past six years, Nina Munk has reported deeply on the Millennium Villages Project, accompanying Sachs on his official trips to Africa and listening in on conversations with heads-of-state, humanitarian organizations, rival economists, and development experts. She has immersed herself in the lives of people in two Millennium villages: Ruhiira, in southwest Uganda, and Dertu, in the arid borderland between Kenya and Somalia. Accepting the hospitality of camel herders and small-hold farmers, and witnessing their struggle to survive, Munk came to understand the real-life issues that challenge Sachs's formula for ending global poverty.
The Idealist is the profound and moving story of what happens when the abstract theories of a brilliant, driven man meet the reality of huma...
Direct download links available for Download The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 7 hours and 46 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Random House Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: September 10, 2013
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00E9YYP36
"The one story that mattered was the story of poverty" so said the author, Nina Munk, in her after notes. And I couldn't agree more. President Obama has declared that this is the year he will focus on "income inequality." Well, it has been a long-term concern of mine, both why it persists within the United States, and why it persists globally, with some countries dramatically raising their standard of living, and others, for seemingly inexplicable reasons, remaining stagnant. And what should well-intentioned individuals in the wealthy, economically developed world do about it? I've read a number of works on the subject, from Gunnar Myrdal's classic Asian Drama to the more recent Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. And in terms of good-intentioned interventions, from the economically developed world, particularly in times of disaster, I've read The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster and Chasing Chaos: My Decade In and Out of Humanitarian Aid, both compliments of the Vine Program. Regrettably, I have not read Sach's
We all love and cherish the idea that somehow we can leave the world a little bit better off than we found it. (That's why Americans are vastly more philanthropic, as individuals, than people in many other nations.) But acting on that desire to do good is incredibly complicated, as generation after generation of philanthropists has discovered. With so much new wealthy having been created over the last 35 or 40 years, and now in the process of being given away by the likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the question of what kind of philanthropic engagement is effective and lasting is front and center once again, and it's in that context that Nina Munk's look at the almost extravagantly ambitious crusade to literally end extreme poverty by Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs should be read.
Sachs, it is clear early on in Munk's narrative, is one of those supremely self-confident individuals who are so intelligent and so accustomed to seeing their ideas and projects work, that they struggle to understand that other people might behave in an irrational manner or that there might be reasons their ideas WON'T work in some settings or contexts. That clash between perception and reality can lead to a kind of tragic hubris -- tragic not only for Sachs himself, but for the lives of those who have served as the raw material of his well-intentioned experiments.
Munk deftly chronicles the rise to cult status of Sachs and his crusade to win acceptance for his Millennium Villages Project. Since anyone likely to pick up this book is already familiar with the rough outlines of the tale, it's not a spoiler to note that the impact hasn't been at all what Sachs had hoped it would be, begging the question of just what happened.
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