A valuable contribution to the development debate, 19 Dec 2008
Political correctness requires that we separate the world into two categories when talking about development - the developed and the developing nations, with one billion people living in the first set, and the other five making up the rest. These categories are insufficient, says Paul Collier, because there are some countries that are not developing, but actually moving backwards: the bottom billion, a "ghetto of misery and discontent", who are getting poorer every year. "Picture this," he writes, "as a billion people stuck in a train that is slowly rolling backwards downhill."

This is a book about that bottom billion, and the unique development challenges that they pose. In particular, Collier addresses four distinct 'traps' - landlocked countries, conflict, poor governance and natural resources, and explores some innovative solutions for overcoming each one.

While not without controversy, especially around his advocacy of military intervention, The Bottom Billion is refreshingly low on ideology and high on hard data. The whole book is based on original research, making this a valuable contribution to the debate for both experts and casual readers alike.

Great too for the non-expert, 28 Nov 2008
I can't really weigh this book relative to others on the subject, because it's the first that I've read on this topic...

But what I wanted to add to the other reviews is that, if you're someone like me, who does not work/study economics or international development, I can recommend this book without hesitation. It's a fascinating read and it's accessible for any background of reader.

After reading you'll probably feel a sense of frustration at how much more could be done and how much of our current efforts may be misdirected. But this is an improvement on the sense of hopelessness I had prior to reading the book; that the truly poor nations will always be that way.

Must read for anyone interested in poverty reduction, 30 Aug 2008
In my work over the last few years, struggling with the issues of development and poverty reduction, and I read a lot of books on the issues. Recently, I read one of the best books in the form of Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion.
Just as Mr. Collier says at the end of his book, discussions on poverty and development have over the last few years been dominated by two extremes: On the one extreme Mr. Jeffrey Sachs call for more aid to "end poverty", and on the other side, William Easterly's negativity that nothing really works (in the books The End of Poverty and The White Man's Burden, respectively).
Mr. Collier strikes a marvelous and necessary balance between these two. On one side, he says about Mr. Sachs:
"At present the clarion call for the left is Jeffrey Sach's book the end of poverty. Much as I agree with Sachs' passionate call to action, I think that he has overplayed the importance of aid. Aid alone will not solve the problems of the bottom billion - we need to use a wider range of policies."
Mr. Sachs is an advocate of more money will solve the problems, but as Mr. Collier puts well in the book, many of the problems related to poverty are structural, from lack of investement, infrastructure, education, conflict, to being landlocked. Some of these problems are not solved just with more money. Unfortunately, this is a tendency in development aid nowadays, perhaps as aid agencies and staff need to justify their existence, even increase it: the need of more money, much of it in the form of budgetary support, which goes directly to a poor country's budget, in ever bigger amounts. But the link to poverty reduction is awkward to say the least: as pointed out in both Easterly's and Collier's book, higher dependence on foreign aid hardly leads to poverty reduction.
How much did I see this in Mozambique: had any of the subsistence farmers I worked with ever benefitted from the Agricultural SWAp...?
Nevertheless, while one cannot argue that aid will help everything, one can not jump into the other side of "Nothing helps" like the old disillusioned Mr. Easterly does (in my personal view Mr. Easterly is the kind of person who would have let slavery continue, not because he agreed with it, but because "we cannot do anything about it"):
"At present the clarion call for the right is economist William Easterly's book The White Man's Burden. Easterly is right to mock the delusions of the aid lobby. But just as Sachs exaggerates the payoff to aid, Easterly exaggerates the downside and again neglects the scope for other policies. We are not as impotent and ignorant as Easterly seems to think."
As Collier amply argues for, there are many situations and examples that aid has helped and alleviated poverty. But as Mr. Collier also amply discusses and argues for, the aid money needs to be allocated in a well-planned way, and not ignoring the context: aid alone is unlikely to help.
I must admit that at first I found the book to start really slowly: Mr. Collier took time to explain his framework for analysis, ennumerating four "traps" which developing countries, or rather, the "bottom billion", the poorest of the poorest caught in a vicious circle of misery of landlockedness, resource trap, conflict and bad governance. These four traps are inter-related and Mr. Collier carefully presents his huge array of statistics to present his argument.
This part was a somewhat tedious read, but after passing this part, the book moves into more interesting areas, namely what can be done about it, the huge dilemmas and difficulties surrounding these issues.
Nevertheless, on a more critical view, the book's argument is built too much on statistics. It makes it powerful, but at the same time one can feel that the argumentation, like with all statistics, is political and absolutist: in social sciences, there are exceptions to all statistics! At the same time, some of the correlations, like for instance between post-conflict situations and democracy, seem so vague that I would never look at a specific situation with that data, but only focus on the context.
Personally, I like that he says it can be done - too often in the world people say: "there have always been poor people, and there always will be". While I don't deny this is true, I find it appalling that this should be used as an excuse: we have always had murders, rape, wars, but nobody in their right mind would say we should do nothing about it!
I like the book, because we finally have a well-written balance abut development aid, something that has been missing for a while as the issue is discussed more and more.

Hard-hitting indictment of development's failure , 01 May 2008
getAbstract finds that this concise, clearly written and hard-hitting book by Paul Collier, one of the world's leading experts on Africa, is a must-read for anyone concerned with development, economic justice, trade, immigration, terrorism and related issues. The author has scant patience with sacred cows of either the right or the left. He penetrates the fictions and fantasies that have helped drive not only unproductive but actually counterproductive policies on aid, trade, investment and more. The book is enlightening, and entertaining in the way that good satire is entertaining. It is also inspiring, since Collier goes beyond merely identifying problems: He offers credible suggestions for solutions.

Beyond the Survival of the Fattest, 30 Apr 2008
While this is a scholarly economics textbook, the author makes a deliberate and commendable effort to keep the language, structure and flow of complex ideas accessible and captivating to the general reader. Its scope and inspiration is universal but the studies are mainly centred on poor African countries caught in various traps: of conflict, dependence on natural resources, bad governance and unfavourable geography including unhelpful neighbours, harsh topography and bleak climate. Collier's basic message is upbeat: none of the traps is inescapable, in spite of the current low rate and low probability of sustained exit from a trap for the billion or so living in the no or negative growth countries.

In the first part of the book, the author draws on extensive in-depth collaborative research to make very subtle analyses of the relationship between conflict and under development. Regrettably, the end result has sometimes the ring of the medieval disputations on the sex of angels. The direction of causation is rarely straight forward even after exhaustive wading through pools of data.

The problem of human as well as financial capital flight as an obstacle to economic growth is dealt with at greater length and cogency. The new approach here involves treating the emigration of skilled and unskilled labour and expatriation of financial resources in the same way as a risk mitigation strategy for the individual. To retain both funds and skills will require elimination of the perceived investment risk profile of the country.

But how can we reduce the growth-negating resource capture by the elite, from aid, natural resources such as oil and minerals? Collier cites the impact of the Extractive Resources Transparency Initiative and the Charter on Blood Diamonds as instances of a fairly effective multilateral approach.

The author further explores the self-perpetuating monster of poor governance, underscoring the need to put in place effective mechanisms for restraint: electoral competition, checks and balances, an independent judiciary and a free press. He shows how publicising budgetary allocations and disbursements for specific projects in the media allows for and encourages follow up by beneficiaries and vigilance by civil society groups to minimise or eliminate leakages. With a wry sense of humour, he advocates the repeal of the law of the political jungle, aptly termed "the survival of the fattest", noting that where patronage politics is feasible, electoral competition encourages the bribery of opinion makers or community leaders instead of using the provision of public services as an electoral argument, leaving the corrupt as the winners.

Should military intervention be an option? Contrasting Iraq and Kosovo, Somalia and Sierra Leone, he sees it as an option that should not be discarded but rather managed with utmost care and resolve. Will freer international trade, as promoted by WTO, help the poorest countries break out of the traps? Collier has doubts and makes a case for the AGOA type of initiative which involves positive discrimination; a handicap race where the Asian front runners have their feet shackled in tariffs to facilitate the entry of products from the poorest African countries. But beyond the traditional instruments of aid and trade, the emphasis of the G8 and other actors in development needs to shift towards issues of security strategies coupled with the application of internationally sanctioned norms and standards of equity and governance.

A valuable contribution to the development debate, 19 Dec 2008
Political correctness requires that we separate the world into two categories when talking about development - the developed and the developing nations, with one billion people living in the first set, and the other five making up the rest. These categories are insufficient, says Paul Collier, because there are some countries that are not developing, but actually moving backwards: the bottom billion, a "ghetto of misery and discontent", who are getting poorer every year. "Picture this," he writes, "as a billion people stuck in a train that is slowly rolling backwards downhill."

This is a book about that bottom billion, and the unique development challenges that they pose. In particular, Collier addresses four distinct 'traps' - landlocked countries, conflict, poor governance and natural resources, and explores some innovative solutions for overcoming each one.

While not without controversy, especially around his advocacy of military intervention, The Bottom Billion is refreshingly low on ideology and high on hard data. The whole book is based on original research, making this a valuable contribution to the debate for both experts and casual readers alike.

Great too for the non-expert, 28 Nov 2008
I can't really weigh this book relative to others on the subject, because it's the first that I've read on this topic...

But what I wanted to add to the other reviews is that, if you're someone like me, who does not work/study economics or international development, I can recommend this book without hesitation. It's a fascinating read and it's accessible for any background of reader.

After reading you'll probably feel a sense of frustration at how much more could be done and how much of our current efforts may be misdirected. But this is an improvement on the sense of hopelessness I had prior to reading the book; that the truly poor nations will always be that way.

Must read for anyone interested in poverty reduction, 30 Aug 2008
In my work over the last few years, struggling with the issues of development and poverty reduction, and I read a lot of books on the issues. Recently, I read one of the best books in the form of Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion.
Just as Mr. Collier says at the end of his book, discussions on poverty and development have over the last few years been dominated by two extremes: On the one extreme Mr. Jeffrey Sachs call for more aid to "end poverty", and on the other side, William Easterly's negativity that nothing really works (in the books The End of Poverty and The White Man's Burden, respectively).
Mr. Collier strikes a marvelous and necessary balance between these two. On one side, he says about Mr. Sachs:
"At present the clarion call for the left is Jeffrey Sach's book the end of poverty. Much as I agree with Sachs' passionate call to action, I think that he has overplayed the importance of aid. Aid alone will not solve the problems of the bottom billion - we need to use a wider range of policies."
Mr. Sachs is an advocate of more money will solve the problems, but as Mr. Collier puts well in the book, many of the problems related to poverty are structural, from lack of investement, infrastructure, education, conflict, to being landlocked. Some of these problems are not solved just with more money. Unfortunately, this is a tendency in development aid nowadays, perhaps as aid agencies and staff need to justify their existence, even increase it: the need of more money, much of it in the form of budgetary support, which goes directly to a poor country's budget, in ever bigger amounts. But the link to poverty reduction is awkward to say the least: as pointed out in both Easterly's and Collier's book, higher dependence on foreign aid hardly leads to poverty reduction.
How much did I see this in Mozambique: had any of the subsistence farmers I worked with ever benefitted from the Agricultural SWAp...?
Nevertheless, while one cannot argue that aid will help everything, one can not jump into the other side of "Nothing helps" like the old disillusioned Mr. Easterly does (in my personal view Mr. Easterly is the kind of person who would have let slavery continue, not because he agreed with it, but because "we cannot do anything about it"):
"At present the clarion call for the right is economist William Easterly's book The White Man's Burden. Easterly is right to mock the delusions of the aid lobby. But just as Sachs exaggerates the payoff to aid, Easterly exaggerates the downside and again neglects the scope for other policies. We are not as impotent and ignorant as Easterly seems to think."
As Collier amply argues for, there are many situations and examples that aid has helped and alleviated poverty. But as Mr. Collier also amply discusses and argues for, the aid money needs to be allocated in a well-planned way, and not ignoring the context: aid alone is unlikely to help.
I must admit that at first I found the book to start really slowly: Mr. Collier took time to explain his framework for analysis, ennumerating four "traps" which developing countries, or rather, the "bottom billion", the poorest of the poorest caught in a vicious circle of misery of landlockedness, resource trap, conflict and bad governance. These four traps are inter-related and Mr. Collier carefully presents his huge array of statistics to present his argument.
This part was a somewhat tedious read, but after passing this part, the book moves into more interesting areas, namely what can be done about it, the huge dilemmas and difficulties surrounding these issues.
Nevertheless, on a more critical view, the book's argument is built too much on statistics. It makes it powerful, but at the same time one can feel that the argumentation, like with all statistics, is political and absolutist: in social sciences, there are exceptions to all statistics! At the same time, some of the correlations, like for instance between post-conflict situations and democracy, seem so vague that I would never look at a specific situation with that data, but only focus on the context.
Personally, I like that he says it can be done - too often in the world people say: "there have always been poor people, and there always will be". While I don't deny this is true, I find it appalling that this should be used as an excuse: we have always had murders, rape, wars, but nobody in their right mind would say we should do nothing about it!
I like the book, because we finally have a well-written balance abut development aid, something that has been missing for a while as the issue is discussed more and more.

Hard-hitting indictment of development's failure , 01 May 2008
getAbstract finds that this concise, clearly written and hard-hitting book by Paul Collier, one of the world's leading experts on Africa, is a must-read for anyone concerned with development, economic justice, trade, immigration, terrorism and related issues. The author has scant patience with sacred cows of either the right or the left. He penetrates the fictions and fantasies that have helped drive not only unproductive but actually counterproductive policies on aid, trade, investment and more. The book is enlightening, and entertaining in the way that good satire is entertaining. It is also inspiring, since Collier goes beyond merely identifying problems: He offers credible suggestions for solutions.

Beyond the Survival of the Fattest, 30 Apr 2008
While this is a scholarly economics textbook, the author makes a deliberate and commendable effort to keep the language, structure and flow of complex ideas accessible and captivating to the general reader. Its scope and inspiration is universal but the studies are mainly centred on poor African countries caught in various traps: of conflict, dependence on natural resources, bad governance and unfavourable geography including unhelpful neighbours, harsh topography and bleak climate. Collier's basic message is upbeat: none of the traps is inescapable, in spite of the current low rate and low probability of sustained exit from a trap for the billion or so living in the no or negative growth countries.

In the first part of the book, the author draws on extensive in-depth collaborative research to make very subtle analyses of the relationship between conflict and under development. Regrettably, the end result has sometimes the ring of the medieval disputations on the sex of angels. The direction of causation is rarely straight forward even after exhaustive wading through pools of data.

The problem of human as well as financial capital flight as an obstacle to economic growth is dealt with at greater length and cogency. The new approach here involves treating the emigration of skilled and unskilled labour and expatriation of financial resources in the same way as a risk mitigation strategy for the individual. To retain both funds and skills will require elimination of the perceived investment risk profile of the country.

But how can we reduce the growth-negating resource capture by the elite, from aid, natural resources such as oil and minerals? Collier cites the impact of the Extractive Resources Transparency Initiative and the Charter on Blood Diamonds as instances of a fairly effective multilateral approach.

The author further explores the self-perpetuating monster of poor governance, underscoring the need to put in place effective mechanisms for restraint: electoral competition, checks and balances, an independent judiciary and a free press. He shows how publicising budgetary allocations and disbursements for specific projects in the media allows for and encourages follow up by beneficiaries and vigilance by civil society groups to minimise or eliminate leakages. With a wry sense of humour, he advocates the repeal of the law of the political jungle, aptly termed "the survival of the fattest", noting that where patronage politics is feasible, electoral competition encourages the bribery of opinion makers or community leaders instead of using the provision of public services as an electoral argument, leaving the corrupt as the winners.

Should military intervention be an option? Contrasting Iraq and Kosovo, Somalia and Sierra Leone, he sees it as an option that should not be discarded but rather managed with utmost care and resolve. Will freer international trade, as promoted by WTO, help the poorest countries break out of the traps? Collier has doubts and makes a case for the AGOA type of initiative which involves positive discrimination; a handicap race where the Asian front runners have their feet shackled in tariffs to facilitate the entry of products from the poorest African countries. But beyond the traditional instruments of aid and trade, the emphasis of the G8 and other actors in development needs to shift towards issues of security strategies coupled with the application of internationally sanctioned norms and standards of equity and governance.


Informative and Invividual - Excellent read , 08 Oct 2008
This is a good book for anyone interested not just in disasters, but in the Weather & Climate of the British Isles.

It is easy to read, irrespective of your level of knowledge on the subject, and is very well researched.

It is written in an individual, sometimes amusing, but always informative style

Highly recommended


its helped me with my exams!, 24 Sep 2007
philip edan has helped me to understand alot more about weather and has got me interested in taking the study of weather patterns further! he has mainly helped me with my geography exams!

"Hutus kill Tutsis, then Tutsis kill Hutus--if that's really all there is to it, then no wonder we can't be bothered with it," Philip Gourevitch writes, imagining the response of somebody in a country far from the ethnic strife and mass killings of Rwanda. But the situation is not so simple, and in this complex and wrenching book, he explains why the Rwandan genocide should not be written off as just another tribal dispute.

The "stories" in this book's subtitle are both the author's, as he repeatedly visits this tiny country in an attempt to make sense of what has happened, and those of the people he interviews. These include a Tutsi doctor who has seen much of her family killed over decades of Tutsi oppression, a Schindleresque hotel manager who hid hundreds of refugees from certain death, and a Rwandan bishop who has been accused of supporting the slaughter of Tutsi schoolchildren, and can only answer these charges by saying, "What could I do?" Gourevitch, a staff writer for the New Yorker, describes Rwanda's history with remarkable clarity and documents the experience of tragedy with a sober grace. The reader will ask along with the author: Why does this happen? And why don't we bother to stop it? --Maria Dolan, Amazon.com

A valuable contribution to the development debate, 19 Dec 2008
Political correctness requires that we separate the world into two categories when talking about development - the developed and the developing nations, with one billion people living in the first set, and the other five making up the rest. These categories are insufficient, says Paul Collier, because there are some countries that are not developing, but actually moving backwards: the bottom billion, a "ghetto of misery and discontent", who are getting poorer every year. "Picture this," he writes, "as a billion people stuck in a train that is slowly rolling backwards downhill."

This is a book about that bottom billion, and the unique development challenges that they pose. In particular, Collier addresses four distinct 'traps' - landlocked countries, conflict, poor governance and natural resources, and explores some innovative solutions for overcoming each one.

While not without controversy, especially around his advocacy of military intervention, The Bottom Billion is refreshingly low on ideology and high on hard data. The whole book is based on original research, making this a valuable contribution to the debate for both experts and casual readers alike.

Great too for the non-expert, 28 Nov 2008
I can't really weigh this book relative to others on the subject, because it's the first that I've read on this topic...

But what I wanted to add to the other reviews is that, if you're someone like me, who does not work/study economics or international development, I can recommend this book without hesitation. It's a fascinating read and it's accessible for any background of reader.

After reading you'll probably feel a sense of frustration at how much more could be done and how much of our current efforts may be misdirected. But this is an improvement on the sense of hopelessness I had prior to reading the book; that the truly poor nations will always be that way.

Must read for anyone interested in poverty reduction, 30 Aug 2008
In my work over the last few years, struggling with the issues of development and poverty reduction, and I read a lot of books on the issues. Recently, I read one of the best books in the form of Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion.
Just as Mr. Collier says at the end of his book, discussions on poverty and development have over the last few years been dominated by two extremes: On the one extreme Mr. Jeffrey Sachs call for more aid to "end poverty", and on the other side, William Easterly's negativity that nothing really works (in the books The End of Poverty and The White Man's Burden, respectively).
Mr. Collier strikes a marvelous and necessary balance between these two. On one side, he says about Mr. Sachs:
"At present the clarion call for the left is Jeffrey Sach's book the end of poverty. Much as I agree with Sachs' passionate call to action, I think that he has overplayed the importance of aid. Aid alone will not solve the problems of the bottom billion - we need to use a wider range of policies."
Mr. Sachs is an advocate of more money will solve the problems, but as Mr. Collier puts well in the book, many of the problems related to poverty are structural, from lack of investement, infrastructure, education, conflict, to being landlocked. Some of these problems are not solved just with more money. Unfortunately, this is a tendency in development aid nowadays, perhaps as aid agencies and staff need to justify their existence, even increase it: the need of more money, much of it in the form of budgetary support, which goes directly to a poor country's budget, in ever bigger amounts. But the link to poverty reduction is awkward to say the least: as pointed out in both Easterly's and Collier's book, higher dependence on foreign aid hardly leads to poverty reduction.
How much did I see this in Mozambique: had any of the subsistence farmers I worked with ever benefitted from the Agricultural SWAp...?
Nevertheless, while one cannot argue that aid will help everything, one can not jump into the other side of "Nothing helps" like the old disillusioned Mr. Easterly does (in my personal view Mr. Easterly is the kind of person who would have let slavery continue, not because he agreed with it, but because "we cannot do anything about it"):
"At present the clarion call for the right is economist William Easterly's book The White Man's Burden. Easterly is right to mock the delusions of the aid lobby. But just as Sachs exaggerates the payoff to aid, Easterly exaggerates the downside and again neglects the scope for other policies. We are not as impotent and ignorant as Easterly seems to think."
As Collier amply argues for, there are many situations and examples that aid has helped and alleviated poverty. But as Mr. Collier also amply discusses and argues for, the aid money needs to be allocated in a well-planned way, and not ignoring the context: aid alone is unlikely to help.
I must admit that at first I found the book to start really slowly: Mr. Collier took time to explain his framework for analysis, ennumerating four "traps" which developing countries, or rather, the "bottom billion", the poorest of the poorest caught in a vicious circle of misery of landlockedness, resource trap, conflict and bad governance. These four traps are inter-related and Mr. Collier carefully presents his huge array of statistics to present his argument.
This part was a somewhat tedious read, but after passing this part, the book moves into more interesting areas, namely what can be done about it, the huge dilemmas and difficulties surrounding these issues.
Nevertheless, on a more critical view, the book's argument is built too much on statistics. It makes it powerful, but at the same time one can feel that the argumentation, like with all statistics, is political and absolutist: in social sciences, there are exceptions to all statistics! At the same time, some of the correlations, like for instance between post-conflict situations and democracy, seem so vague that I would never look at a specific situation with that data, but only focus on the context.
Personally, I like that he says it can be done - too often in the world people say: "there have always been poor people, and there always will be". While I don't deny this is true, I find it appalling that this should be used as an excuse: we have always had murders, rape, wars, but nobody in their right mind would say we should do nothing about it!
I like the book, because we finally have a well-written balance abut development aid, something that has been missing for a while as the issue is discussed more and more.

Hard-hitting indictment of development's failure , 01 May 2008
getAbstract finds that this concise, clearly written and hard-hitting book by Paul Collier, one of the world's leading experts on Africa, is a must-read for anyone concerned with development, economic justice, trade, immigration, terrorism and related issues. The author has scant patience with sacred cows of either the right or the left. He penetrates the fictions and fantasies that have helped drive not only unproductive but actually counterproductive policies on aid, trade, investment and more. The book is enlightening, and entertaining in the way that good satire is entertaining. It is also inspiring, since Collier goes beyond merely identifying problems: He offers credible suggestions for solutions.

Beyond the Survival of the Fattest, 30 Apr 2008
While this is a scholarly economics textbook, the author makes a deliberate and commendable effort to keep the language, structure and flow of complex ideas accessible and captivating to the general reader. Its scope and inspiration is universal but the studies are mainly centred on poor African countries caught in various traps: of conflict, dependence on natural resources, bad governance and unfavourable geography including unhelpful neighbours, harsh topography and bleak climate. Collier's basic message is upbeat: none of the traps is inescapable, in spite of the current low rate and low probability of sustained exit from a trap for the billion or so living in the no or negative growth countries.

In the first part of the book, the author draws on extensive in-depth collaborative research to make very subtle analyses of the relationship between conflict and under development. Regrettably, the end result has sometimes the ring of the medieval disputations on the sex of angels. The direction of causation is rarely straight forward even after exhaustive wading through pools of data.

The problem of human as well as financial capital flight as an obstacle to economic growth is dealt with at greater length and cogency. The new approach here involves treating the emigration of skilled and unskilled labour and expatriation of financial resources in the same way as a risk mitigation strategy for the individual. To retain both funds and skills will require elimination of the perceived investment risk profile of the country.

But how can we reduce the growth-negating resource capture by the elite, from aid, natural resources such as oil and minerals? Collier cites the impact of the Extractive Resources Transparency Initiative and the Charter on Blood Diamonds as instances of a fairly effective multilateral approach.

The author further explores the self-perpetuating monster of poor governance, underscoring the need to put in place effective mechanisms for restraint: electoral competition, checks and balances, an independent judiciary and a free press. He shows how publicising budgetary allocations and disbursements for specific projects in the media allows for and encourages follow up by beneficiaries and vigilance by civil society groups to minimise or eliminate leakages. With a wry sense of humour, he advocates the repeal of the law of the political jungle, aptly termed "the survival of the fattest", noting that where patronage politics is feasible, electoral competition encourages the bribery of opinion makers or community leaders instead of using the provision of public services as an electoral argument, leaving the corrupt as the winners.

Should military intervention be an option? Contrasting Iraq and Kosovo, Somalia and Sierra Leone, he sees it as an option that should not be discarded but rather managed with utmost care and resolve. Will freer international trade, as promoted by WTO, help the poorest countries break out of the traps? Collier has doubts and makes a case for the AGOA type of initiative which involves positive discrimination; a handicap race where the Asian front runners have their feet shackled in tariffs to facilitate the entry of products from the poorest African countries. But beyond the traditional instruments of aid and trade, the emphasis of the G8 and other actors in development needs to shift towards issues of security strategies coupled with the application of internationally sanctioned norms and standards of equity and governance.


Informative and Invividual - Excellent read , 08 Oct 2008
This is a good book for anyone interested not just in disasters, but in the Weather & Climate of the British Isles.

It is easy to read, irrespective of your level of knowledge on the subject, and is very well researched.

It is written in an individual, sometimes amusing, but always informative style

Highly recommended


its helped me with my exams!, 24 Sep 2007
philip edan has helped me to understand alot more about weather and has got me interested in taking the study of weather patterns further! he has mainly helped me with my geography exams!

The best book to start understanding Rwanda with, 22 Jul 2008
This is undoubtedly the best book to read in order to understand the events of and leading to the genocide in 1994. Well written, and well researched this is a book that lays bare the people and events.
Gourevitch expertly weaves macro-politics, Rwandese culture and society and personal testimonies in a way that covers every aspect of this tragic period.
It does leave the reader with a clear viewpoint - something that many call biased writing. However, he comes to and leads readers to the only conclusion that can be drawn from the events.

Must read, 12 Feb 2008
This is an awesome book. Written by an American journalist in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide this is an excellently written book which tells the real stories of people caught up in the fighting, along with an overview of the historical background plus a political expose of the shameful actions of the West in promoting and exacerbating the situation. i cannot recommend this highly enough. I actually couldn't put it down.

A true story, 08 Jul 2005
In this well researched and beautifully written book about the genocide in Rwanda, Philip Gourevitch did a brilliant job not only in telling us about the genocide, but also in making us understand the intricate history of the land that made the genocide possible and the aftermath of the genocide. The book moved me from the opening to the last pages. What I particularly liked about this work by Gourevitch is the fact that it is easy for a non-African or non-Rwandan mind that has no knowledge of Rwanda to understand the story. The analysis was perfect and the criticism deserving.

There appears to be a pattern of international detachment in all the contemporary genocides our world witnessed.TRIPLE AGENT DOUBLE CROSS,EYE-WITNESS TO GENOCIDE, DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE, POL PLOT CONFIRM THOSE PATTERNS. It is appalling to learn that the Rwandan genocide happened in the presence of French soldiers, news agencies and international humanitarian groups. It is even more disheartening to learn that the UN was aware of what was going on and the big powers did nothing to stop it.

The Shaming of the West, 08 Mar 2005
This book is extremely powerful. I came to it after a personal recomendation and after seeing the equally powerful Hotel Rwanda. Although not ignorant of the genocide in central Africa, it had nestled in the back of my mind, along with other disasters, atrocities and tragedies across the 15 years I have been a sentient observer of these things.

I think it is vital that people understand what happened in Rwanda. I think it is important that people realise the capacity of man to bring devestation and horror to fellow man. But perhaps most shockingly people in the West should realise just how callously the foreign policy of their countries is carried out. The Realpolitik of genocide, with Chinese trade, French support for the Francophonie (dead Tutsis don't speak English), US unwillingness to risk another Somalia and the stalling and prevarication of the UN all add to the sheer anger and frustration that one feels when reading about this.

A must read.

Brilliant, 09 Oct 2003
This is a masterpiece. For developing an understanding of the problems in Rwanda, I could not recommend it enough. If you have any interest in this subject, you should buy this book. I have not read many books that are this informative at the same time as being a page-turner.

Just when you've stopped worrying, along comes Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, with teeming armies of deadly viruses, nanobots, and armed fanatics in Our Final Century.

Beyond the hazards most of us know about--smallpox, terrorists, global warming--Rees introduces the new threats of the 21st century and the unholy political and scientific alliances that have made them possible. He spells out doomsday scenarios for cosmic collisions, high-energy experiments gone wrong, and self-replicating machines that steadily devour the biosphere. If we can avoid driving ourselves to extinction, he writes, a glorious future awaits; if not, our devices may very well destroy the universe.

What happens here on Earth, in this century, could conceivably make the difference between a near eternity filled with ever more complex and subtle forms of life and one filled with nothing but base matter.

For many technological debacles, Rees places much of the blame squarely on the shoulders of the scientists who participate in perfecting environmental destruction, biological menaces, and ever-more powerful weapons. So is there any hope for humanity? Rees is vaguely optimistic on this point, offering solutions that would require a level of worldwide cooperation humans have yet to exhibit. If the daily news isn't enough to make you want to crawl under a rock, this book will do the trick. --Therese Littleton

A valuable contribution to the development debate, 19 Dec 2008
Political correctness requires that we separate the world into two categories when talking about development - the developed and the developing nations, with one billion people living in the first set, and the other five making up the rest. These categories are insufficient, says Paul Collier, because there are some countries that are not developing, but actually moving backwards: the bottom billion, a "ghetto of misery and discontent", who are getting poorer every year. "Picture this," he writes, "as a billion people stuck in a train that is slowly rolling backwards downhill."

This is a book about that bottom billion, and the unique development challenges that they pose. In particular, Collier addresses four distinct 'traps' - landlocked countries, conflict, poor governance and natural resources, and explores some innovative solutions for overcoming each one.

While not without controversy, especially around his advocacy of military intervention, The Bottom Billion is refreshingly low on ideology and high on hard data. The whole book is based on original research, making this a valuable contribution to the debate for both experts and casual readers alike.

Great too for the non-expert, 28 Nov 2008
I can't really weigh this book relative to others on the subject, because it's the first that I've read on this topic...

But what I wanted to add to the other reviews is that, if you're someone like me, who does not work/study economics or international development, I can recommend this book without hesitation. It's a fascinating read and it's accessible for any background of reader.

After reading you'll probably feel a sense of frustration at how much more could be done and how much of our current efforts may be misdirected. But this is an improvement on the sense of hopelessness I had prior to reading the book; that the truly poor nations will always be that way.

Must read for anyone interested in poverty reduction, 30 Aug 2008
In my work over the last few years, struggling with the issues of development and poverty reduction, and I read a lot of books on the issues. Recently, I read one of the best books in the form of Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion.
Just as Mr. Collier says at the end of his book, discussions on poverty and development have over the last few years been dominated by two extremes: On the one extreme Mr. Jeffrey Sachs call for more aid to "end poverty", and on the other side, William Easterly's negativity that nothing really works (in the books The End of Poverty and The White Man's Burden, respectively).
Mr. Collier strikes a marvelous and necessary balance between these two. On one side, he says about Mr. Sachs:
"At present the clarion call for the left is Jeffrey Sach's book the end of poverty. Much as I agree with Sachs' passionate call to action, I think that he has overplayed the importance of aid. Aid alone will not solve the problems of the bottom billion - we need to use a wider range of policies."
Mr. Sachs is an advocate of more money will solve the problems, but as Mr. Collier puts well in the book, many of the problems related to poverty are structural, from lack of investement, infrastructure, education, conflict, to being landlocked. Some of these problems are not solved just with more money. Unfortunately, this is a tendency in development aid nowadays, perhaps as aid agencies and staff need to justify their existence, even increase it: the need of more money, much of it in the form of budgetary support, which goes directly to a poor country's budget, in ever bigger amounts. But the link to poverty reduction is awkward to say the least: as pointed out in both Easterly's and Collier's book, higher dependence on foreign aid hardly leads to poverty reduction.
How much did I see this in Mozambique: had any of the subsistence farmers I worked with ever benefitted from the Agricultural SWAp...?
Nevertheless, while one cannot argue that aid will help everything, one can not jump into the other side of "Nothing helps" like the old disillusioned Mr. Easterly does (in my personal view Mr. Easterly is the kind of person who would have let slavery continue, not because he agreed with it, but because "we cannot do anything about it"):
"At present the clarion call for the right is economist William Easterly's book The White Man's Burden. Easterly is right to mock the delusions of the aid lobby. But just as Sachs exaggerates the payoff to aid, Easterly exaggerates the downside and again neglects the scope for other policies. We are not as impotent and ignorant as Easterly seems to think."
As Collier amply argues for, there are many situations and examples that aid has helped and alleviated poverty. But as Mr. Collier also amply discusses and argues for, the aid money needs to be allocated in a well-planned way, and not ignoring the context: aid alone is unlikely to help.
I must admit that at first I found the book to start really slowly: Mr. Collier took time to explain his framework for analysis, ennumerating four "traps" which developing countries, or rather, the "bottom billion", the poorest of the poorest caught in a vicious circle of misery of landlockedness, resource trap, conflict and bad governance. These four traps are inter-related and Mr. Collier carefully presents his huge array of statistics to present his argument.
This part was a somewhat tedious read, but after passing this part, the book moves into more interesting areas, namely what can be done about it, the huge dilemmas and difficulties surrounding these issues.
Nevertheless, on a more critical view, the book's argument is built too much on statistics. It makes it powerful, but at the same time one can feel that the argumentation, like with all statistics, is political and absolutist: in social sciences, there are exceptions to all statistics! At the same time, some of the correlations, like for instance between post-conflict situations and democracy, seem so vague that I would never look at a specific situation with that data, but only focus on the context.
Personally, I like that he says it can be done - too often in the world people say: "there have always been poor people, and there always will be". While I don't deny this is true, I find it appalling that this should be used as an excuse: we have always had murders, rape, wars, but nobody in their right mind would say we should do nothing about it!
I like the book, because we finally have a well-written balance abut development aid, something that has been missing for a while as the issue is discussed more and more.

Hard-hitting indictment of development's failure , 01 May 2008
getAbstract finds that this concise, clearly written and hard-hitting book by Paul Collier, one of the world's leading experts on Africa, is a must-read for anyone concerned with development, economic justice, trade, immigration, terrorism and related issues. The author has scant patience with sacred cows of either the right or the left. He penetrates the fictions and fantasies that have helped drive not only unproductive but actually counterproductive policies on aid, trade, investment and more. The book is enlightening, and entertaining in the way that good satire is entertaining. It is also inspiring, since Collier goes beyond merely identifying problems: He offers credible suggestions for solutions.

Beyond the Survival of the Fattest, 30 Apr 2008
While this is a scholarly economics textbook, the author makes a deliberate and commendable effort to keep the language, structure and flow of complex ideas accessible and captivating to the general reader. Its scope and inspiration is universal but the studies are mainly centred on poor African countries caught in various traps: of conflict, dependence on natural resources, bad governance and unfavourable geography including unhelpful neighbours, harsh topography and bleak climate. Collier's basic message is upbeat: none of the traps is inescapable, in spite of the current low rate and low probability of sustained exit from a trap for the billion or so living in the no or negative growth countries.

In the first part of the book, the author draws on extensive in-depth collaborative research to make very subtle analyses of the relationship between conflict and under development. Regrettably, the end result has sometimes the ring of the medieval disputations on the sex of angels. The direction of causation is rarely straight forward even after exhaustive wading through pools of data.

The problem of human as well as financial capital flight as an obstacle to economic growth is dealt with at greater length and cogency. The new approach here involves treating the emigration of skilled and unskilled labour and expatriation of financial resources in the same way as a risk mitigation strategy for the individual. To retain both funds and skills will require elimination of the perceived investment risk profile of the country.

But how can we reduce the growth-negating resource capture by the elite, from aid, natural resources such as oil and minerals? Collier cites the impact of the Extractive Resources Transparency Initiative and the Charter on Blood Diamonds as instances of a fairly effective multilateral approach.

The author further explores the self-perpetuating monster of poor governance, underscoring the need to put in place effective mechanisms for restraint: electoral competition, checks and balances, an independent judiciary and a free press. He shows how publicising budgetary allocations and disbursements for specific projects in the media allows for and encourages follow up by beneficiaries and vigilance by civil society groups to minimise or eliminate leakages. With a wry sense of humour, he advocates the repeal of the law of the political jungle, aptly termed "the survival of the fattest", noting that where patronage politics is feasible, electoral competition encourages the bribery of opinion makers or community leaders instead of using the provision of public services as an electoral argument, leaving the corrupt as the winners.

Should military intervention be an option? Contrasting Iraq and Kosovo, Somalia and Sierra Leone, he sees it as an option that should not be discarded but rather managed with utmost care and resolve. Will freer international trade, as promoted by WTO, help the poorest countries break out of the traps? Collier has doubts and makes a case for the AGOA type of initiative which involves positive discrimination; a handicap race where the Asian front runners have their feet shackled in tariffs to facilitate the entry of products from the poorest African countries. But beyond the traditional instruments of aid and trade, the emphasis of the G8 and other actors in development needs to shift towards issues of security strategies coupled with the application of internationally sanctioned norms and standards of equity and governance.


Informative and Invividual - Excellent read , 08 Oct 2008
This is a good book for anyone interested not just in disasters, but in the Weather & Climate of the British Isles.

It is easy to read, irrespective of your level of knowledge on the subject, and is very well researched.

It is written in an individual, sometimes amusing, but always informative style

Highly recommended


its helped me with my exams!, 24 Sep 2007
philip edan has helped me to understand alot more about weather and has got me interested in taking the study of weather patterns further! he has mainly helped me with my geography exams!

The best book to start understanding Rwanda with, 22 Jul 2008
This is undoubtedly the best book to read in order to understand the events of and leading to the genocide in 1994. Well written, and well researched this is a book that lays bare the people and events.
Gourevitch expertly weaves macro-politics, Rwandese culture and society and personal testimonies in a way that covers every aspect of this tragic period.
It does leave the reader with a clear viewpoint - something that many call biased writing. However, he comes to and leads readers to the only conclusion that can be drawn from the events.

Must read, 12 Feb 2008
This is an awesome book. Written by an American journalist in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide this is an excellently written book which tells the real stories of people caught up in the fighting, along with an overview of the historical background plus a political expose of the shameful actions of the West in promoting and exacerbating the situation. i cannot recommend this highly enough. I actually couldn't put it down.

A true story, 08 Jul 2005
In this well researched and beautifully written book about the genocide in Rwanda, Philip Gourevitch did a brilliant job not only in telling us about the genocide, but also in making us understand the intricate history of the land that made the genocide possible and the aftermath of the genocide. The book moved me from the opening to the last pages. What I particularly liked about this work by Gourevitch is the fact that it is easy for a non-African or non-Rwandan mind that has no knowledge of Rwanda to understand the story. The analysis was perfect and the criticism deserving.

There appears to be a pattern of international detachment in all the contemporary genocides our world witnessed.TRIPLE AGENT DOUBLE CROSS,EYE-WITNESS TO GENOCIDE, DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE, POL PLOT CONFIRM THOSE PATTERNS. It is appalling to learn that the Rwandan genocide happened in the presence of French soldiers, news agencies and international humanitarian groups. It is even more disheartening to learn that the UN was aware of what was going on and the big powers did nothing to stop it.

The Shaming of the West, 08 Mar 2005
This book is extremely powerful. I came to it after a personal recomendation and after seeing the equally powerful Hotel Rwanda. Although not ignorant of the genocide in central Africa, it had nestled in the back of my mind, along with other disasters, atrocities and tragedies across the 15 years I have been a sentient observer of these things.

I think it is vital that people understand what happened in Rwanda. I think it is important that people realise the capacity of man to bring devestation and horror to fellow man. But perhaps most shockingly people in the West should realise just how callously the foreign policy of their countries is carried out. The Realpolitik of genocide, with Chinese trade, French support for the Francophonie (dead Tutsis don't speak English), US unwillingness to risk another Somalia and the stalling and prevarication of the UN all add to the sheer anger and frustration that one feels when reading about this.

A must read.

Brilliant, 09 Oct 2003
This is a masterpiece. For developing an understanding of the problems in Rwanda, I could not recommend it enough. If you have any interest in this subject, you should buy this book. I have not read many books that are this informative at the same time as being a page-turner.

Captivating , 19 Dec 2006
Martin Rees discusses a large variety of subjects in Our Final Century; everything that could wipe mankind of the face of the Earth, and that's an awful lot. Taking up such a subject cannot lead to an in-depth description of details. But Rees has succeeded wonderfully in writing a book that informs the general reader about everything that could happen, to what extent we can expect it to happen, and the possible actions we should take to prevent it from happening.

Our Final Century is written in a pleasant, informal style. Rees occasionally shares his experiences and opinions, but in a modest way, without being pushy or pedantic. From beginning to end, this book does not cease to interest, succeeding in both amusing and alarming the reader.


Interesting, but not as in depth as it could have been, 28 Sep 2004
Being an astronomer gives you a different perspective to life on Earth to the rest of us, as Martin Rees acknowledges in this book. While the rest of us spend our lives surrounded by life, astronomers spend their time staring into and thinking about vast expanses of lifeless nothing, watching stars blow up and seeing the evidence scattered all around us that shows how the Universe just doesn't look to receptive to life in general. We are just a small blue speck in the vast scheme of things, and specks get blown away all too easily.

It's why he's probably better placed than most to write a book like this, looking at the various ways we could wipe ourselves out over the next hundred years, and what steps we could take to increase the chances of our survival. He looks at a variety of scenarios, from 'bioerror and bioterror' through nanotechnology gone wrong to bizarre possibilities in advanced physics experiments that might not just destroy Earth, but could go on to destroy the entire universe - and it would all happen so quickly that we'd never know about it.

Rees is clearly and expert on his subject, and isn't just a mad prophet in the desert calling down woe on the works of mankind. He wants us to survive, wants us to be aware of the risks we face and what we can do to avoid them or lessen the risk. He's careful to end the book on notes of hope rather than despair, like a Nick Ross on a cosmic scale telling us not to have nightmares about the risk of our entire existence being stolen from us in the night.

However, it's not the book it should be, principally because it's too short, often reading as though it's either a precis of a longer and more detailed work or that Rees' editor was convinced by some of his earlier arguments and pressured him to finish the book before Armageddon overcame us all. Or, it may be simply to attract an audience for the book that might be put off by a larger and more complex work, which is a shame as some of his arguments don't carry the weight they could - for instance, there's little discussion of the risk of nuclear conflct beyond terrorism in the next century - if they were at greater length. One also wonders why Rees chose to devote so much space to the so-called Doomsday Argument when its philosophically rather weak (the most glaring flaw I spotted is that it could have been made at just about any time in the last several thousand years to 'prove' we would be extinct 'soon') when other areas are skirted over, but perhaps that's merely personal choice.

However, that doesn't stop this from being a generally interesting and informative book that's well worth reading, though one will have to resort to the extensive bibliography to get the real depth that would make the book a true classic.

A scientist's look at the end of the world, 07 May 2003
Interesting book, which would have been great with a slightly tighter focus. Sir Martin Rees tries to warn us that with ever-faster technological progress, the odds of a truly catastrophic mishap - either by accident or design - are going to be significant over the next century. He outlines 'familiar' dangers such as nuclear weapons, genetically engineered viruses, environmental hazards and includes more futuristic ideas about nanotechnology running amok and artificial hyperintelligences taking over.

Truly an interesting subject, and a good book, but unfortunately the ending maybe rambles off into a fairly generic speculation of humanity's potential future, should we succeed in not wiping ourselves out. The book takes a reasonably apolitical slant, which I think is a shame but maybe justified as the author is, after all, a scientist.

There are interesting thoughts on whether we should seek to ban certain lines of research on the grounds that the research itself is too dangerous, compared to the benefits, or that it might lead to potentially dangerous uses. There's a very interesting chapter on the philosophical, probabilistic Doomsday theories.

All in all, a good and quick read on an interesting, and unfortunately quite timely, subject.

A valuable contribution to the development debate, 19 Dec 2008
Political correctness requires that we separate the world into two categories when talking about development - the developed and the developing nations, with one billion people living in the first set, and the other five making up the rest. These categories are insufficient, says Paul Collier, because there are some countries that are not developing, but actually moving backwards: the bottom billion, a "ghetto of misery and discontent", who are getting poorer every year. "Picture this," he writes, "as a billion people stuck in a train that is slowly rolling backwards downhill."

This is a book about that bottom billion, and the unique development challenges that they pose. In particular, Collier addresses four distinct 'traps' - landlocked countries, conflict, poor governance and natural resources, and explores some innovative solutions for overcoming each one.

While not without controversy, especially around his advocacy of military intervention, The Bottom Billion is refreshingly low on ideology and high on hard data. The whole book is based on original research, making this a valuable contribution to the debate for both experts and casual readers alike.

Great too for the non-expert, 28 Nov 2008
I can't really weigh this book relative to others on the subject, because it's the first that I've read on this topic...

But what I wanted to add to the other reviews is that, if you're someone like me, who does not work/study economics or international development, I can recommend this book without hesitation. It's a fascinating read and it's accessible for any background of reader.

After reading you'll probably feel a sense of frustration at how much more could be done and how much of our current efforts may be misdirected. But this is an improvement on the sense of hopelessness I had prior to reading the book; that the truly poor nations will always be that way.

Must read for anyone interested in poverty reduction, 30 Aug 2008
In my work over the last few years, struggling with the issues of development and poverty reduction, and I read a lot of books on the issues. Recently, I read one of the best books in the form of Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion.
Just as Mr. Collier says at the end of his book, discussions on poverty and development have over the last few years been dominated by two extremes: On the one extreme Mr. Jeffrey Sachs call for more aid to "end poverty", and on the other side, William Easterly's negativity that nothing really works (in the books The End of Poverty and The White Man's Burden, respectively).
Mr. Collier strikes a marvelous and necessary balance between these two. On one side, he says about Mr. Sachs:
"At present the clarion call for the left is Jeffrey Sach's book the end of poverty. Much as I agree with Sachs' passionate call to action, I think that he has overplayed the importance of aid. Aid alone will not solve the problems of the bottom billion - we need to use a wider range of policies."
Mr. Sachs is an advocate of more money will solve the problems, but as Mr. Collier puts well in the book, many of the problems related to poverty are structural, from lack of investement, infrastructure, education, conflict, to being landlocked. Some of these problems are not solved just with more money. Unfortunately, this is a tendency in development aid nowadays, perhaps as aid agencies and staff need to justify their existence, even increase it: the need of more money, much of it in the form of budgetary support, which goes directly to a poor country's budget, in ever bigger amounts. But the link to poverty reduction is awkward to say the least: as pointed out in both Easterly's and Collier's book, higher dependence on foreign aid hardly leads to poverty reduction.
How much did I see this in Mozambique: had any of the subsistence farmers I worked with ever benefitted from the Agricultural SWAp...?
Nevertheless, while one cannot argue that aid will help everything, one can not jump into the other side of "Nothing helps" like the old disillusioned Mr. Easterly does (in my personal view Mr. Easterly is the kind of person who would have let slavery continue, not because he agreed with it, but because "we cannot do anything about it"):
"At present the clarion call for the right is economist William Easterly's book The White Man's Burden. Easterly is right to mock the delusions of the aid lobby. But just as Sachs exaggerates the payoff to aid, Easterly exaggerates the downside and again neglects the scope for other policies. We are not as impotent and ignorant as Easterly seems to think."
As Collier amply argues for, there are many situations and examples that aid has helped and alleviated poverty. But as Mr. Collier also amply discusses and argues for, the aid money needs to be allocated in a well-planned way, and not ignoring the context: aid alone is unlikely to help.
I must admit that at first I found the book to start really slowly: Mr. Collier took time to explain his framework for analysis, ennumerating four "traps" which developing countries, or rather, the "bottom billion", the poorest of the poorest caught in a vicious circle of misery of landlockedness, resource trap, conflict and bad governance. These four traps are inter-related and Mr. Collier carefully presents his huge array of statistics to present his argument.
This part was a somewhat tedious read, but after passing this part, the book moves into more interesting areas, namely what can be done about it, the huge dilemmas and difficulties surrounding these issues.
Nevertheless, on a more critical view, the book's argument is built too much on statistics. It makes it powerful, but at the same time one can feel that the argumentation, like with all statistics, is political and absolutist: in social sciences, there are exceptions to all statistics! At the same time, some of the correlations, like for instance between post-conflict situations and democracy, seem so vague that I would never look at a specific situation with that data, but only focus on the context.
Personally, I like that he says it can be done - too often in the world people say: "there have always been poor people, and there always will be". While I don't deny this is true, I find it appalling that this should be used as an excuse: we have always had murders, rape, wars, but nobody in their right mind would say we should do nothing about it!
I like the book, because we finally have a well-written balance abut development aid, something that has been missing for a while as the issue is discussed more and more.

Hard-hitting indictment of development's failure , 01 May 2008
getAbstract finds that this concise, clearly written and hard-hitting book by Paul Collier, one of the world's leading experts on Africa, is a must-read for anyone concerned with development, economic justice, trade, immigration, terrorism and related issues. The author has scant patience with sacred cows of either the right or the left. He penetrates the fictions and fantasies that have helped drive not only unproductive but actually counterproductive policies on aid, trade, investment and more. The book is enlightening, and entertaining in the way that good satire is entertaining. It is also inspiring, since Collier goes beyond merely identifying problems: He offers credible suggestions for solutions.

Beyond the Survival of the Fattest, 30 Apr 2008
While this is a scholarly economics textbook, the author makes a deliberate and commendable effort to keep the language, structure and flow of complex ideas accessible and captivating to the general reader. Its scope and inspiration is universal but the studies are mainly centred on poor African countries caught in various traps: of conflict, dependence on natural resources, bad governance and unfavourable geography including unhelpful neighbours, harsh topography and bleak climate. Collier's basic message is upbeat: none of the traps is inescapable, in spite of the current low rate and low probability of sustained exit from a trap for the billion or so living in the no or negative growth countries.

In the first part of the book, the author draws on extensive in-depth collaborative research to make very subtle analyses of the relationship between conflict and under development. Regrettably, the end result has sometimes the ring of the medieval disputations on the sex of angels. The direction of causation is rarely straight forward even after exhaustive wading through pools of data.

The problem of human as well as financial capital flight as an obstacle to economic growth is dealt with at greater length and cogency. The new approach here involves treating the emigration of skilled and unskilled labour and expatriation of financial resources in the same way as a risk mitigation strategy for the individual. To retain both funds and skills will require elimination of the perceived investment risk profile of the country.

But how can we reduce the growth-negating resource capture by the elite, from aid, natural resources such as oil and minerals? Collier cites the impact of the Extractive Resources Transparency Initiative and the Charter on Blood Diamonds as instances of a fairly effective multilateral approach.

The author further explores the self-perpetuating monster of poor governance, underscoring the need to put in place effective mechanisms for restraint: electoral competition, checks and balances, an independent judiciary and a free press. He shows how publicising budgetary allocations and disbursements for specific projects in the media allows for and encourages follow up by beneficiaries and vigilance by civil society groups to minimise or eliminate leakages. With a wry sense of humour, he advocates the repeal of the law of the political jungle, aptly termed "the survival of the fattest", noting that where patronage politics is feasible, electoral competition encourages the bribery of opinion makers or community leaders instead of using the provision of public services as an electoral argument, leaving the corrupt as the winners.

Should military intervention be an option? Contrasting Iraq and Kosovo, Somalia and Sierra Leone, he sees it as an option that should not be discarded but rather managed with utmost care and resolve. Will freer international trade, as promoted by WTO, help the poorest countries break out of the traps? Collier has doubts and makes a case for the AGOA type of initiative which involves positive discrimination; a handicap race where the Asian front runners have their feet shackled in tariffs to facilitate the entry of products from the poorest African countries. But beyond the traditional instruments of aid and trade, the emphasis of the G8 and other actors in development needs to shift towards issues of security strategies coupled with the application of internationally sanctioned norms and standards of equity and governance.


Informative and Invividual - Excellent read , 08 Oct 2008
This is a good book for anyone interested not just in disasters, but in the Weather & Climate of the British Isles.

It is easy to read, irrespective of your level of knowledge on the subject, and is very well researched.

It is written in an individual, sometimes amusing, but always informative style

Highly recommended


its helped me with my exams!, 24 Sep 2007
philip edan has helped me to understand alot more about weather and has got me interested in taking the study of weather patterns further! he has mainly helped me with my geography exams!

The best book to start understanding Rwanda with, 22 Jul 2008
This is undoubtedly the best book to read in order to understand the events of and leading to the genocide in 1994. Well written, and well researched this is a book that lays bare the people and events.
Gourevitch expertly weaves macro-politics, Rwandese culture and society and personal testimonies in a way that covers every aspect of this tragic period.
It does leave the reader with a clear viewpoint - something that many call biased writing. However, he comes to and leads readers to the only conclusion that can be drawn from the events.

Must read, 12 Feb 2008
This is an awesome book. Written by an American journalist in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide this is an excellently written book which tells the real stories of people caught up in the fighting, along with an overview of the historical background plus a political expose of the shameful actions of the West in promoting and exacerbating the situation. i cannot recommend this highly enough. I actually couldn't put it down.

A true story, 08 Jul 2005
In this well researched and beautifully written book about the genocide in Rwanda, Philip Gourevitch did a brilliant job not only in telling us about the genocide, but also in making us understand the intricate history of the land that made the genocide possible and the aftermath of the genocide. The book moved me from the opening to the last pages. What I particularly liked about this work by Gourevitch is the fact that it is easy for a non-African or non-Rwandan mind that has no knowledge of Rwanda to understand the story. The analysis was perfect and the criticism deserving.

There appears to be a pattern of international detachment in all the contemporary genocides our world witnessed.TRIPLE AGENT DOUBLE CROSS,EYE-WITNESS TO GENOCIDE, DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE, POL PLOT CONFIRM THOSE PATTERNS. It is appalling to learn that the Rwandan genocide happened in the presence of French soldiers, news agencies and international humanitarian groups. It is even more disheartening to learn that the UN was aware of what was going on and the big powers did nothing to stop it.

The Shaming of the West, 08 Mar 2005
This book is extremely powerful. I came to it after a personal recomendation and after seeing the equally powerful Hotel Rwanda. Although not ignorant of the genocide in central Africa, it had nestled in the back of my mind, along with other disasters, atrocities and tragedies across the 15 years I have been a sentient observer of these things.

I think it is vital that people understand what happened in Rwanda. I think it is important that people realise the capacity of man to bring devestation and horror to fellow man. But perhaps most shockingly people in the West should realise just how callously the foreign policy of their countries is carried out. The Realpolitik of genocide, with Chinese trade, French support for the Francophonie (dead Tutsis don't speak English), US unwillingness to risk another Somalia and the stalling and prevarication of the UN all add to the sheer anger and frustration that one feels when reading about this.

A must read.

Brilliant, 09 Oct 2003
This is a masterpiece. For developing an understanding of the problems in Rwanda, I could not recommend it enough. If you have any interest in this subject, you should buy this book. I have not read many books that are this informative at the same time as being a page-turner.

Captivating , 19 Dec 2006
Martin Rees discusses a large variety of subjects in Our Final Century; everything that could wipe mankind of the face of the Earth, and that's an awful lot. Taking up such a subject cannot lead to an in-depth description of details. But Rees has succeeded wonderfully in writing a book that informs the general reader about everything that could happen, to what extent we can expect it to happen, and the possible actions we should take to prevent it from happening.

Our Final Century is written in a pleasant, informal style. Rees occasionally shares his experiences and opinions, but in a modest way, without being pushy or pedantic. From beginning to end, this book does not cease to interest, succeeding in both amusing and alarming the reader.


Interesting, but not as in depth as it could have been, 28 Sep 2004
Being an astronomer gives you a different perspective to life on Earth to the rest of us, as Martin Rees acknowledges in this book. While the rest of us spend our lives surrounded by life, astronomers spend their time staring into and thinking about vast expanses of lifeless nothing, watching stars blow up and seeing the evidence scattered all around us that shows how the Universe just doesn't look to receptive to life in general. We are just a small blue speck in the vast scheme of things, and specks get blown away all too easily.

It's why he's probably better placed than most to write a book like this, looking at the various ways we could wipe ourselves out over the next hundred years, and what steps we could take to increase the chances of our survival. He looks at a variety of scenarios, from 'bioerror and bioterror' through nanotechnology gone wrong to bizarre possibilities in advanced physics experiments that might not just destroy Earth, but could go on to destroy the entire universe - and it would all happen so quickly that we'd never know about it.

Rees is clearly and expert on his subject, and isn't just a mad prophet in the desert calling down woe on the works of mankind. He wants us to survive, wants us to be aware of the risks we face and what we can do to avoid them or lessen the risk. He's careful to end the book on notes of hope rather than despair, like a Nick Ross on a cosmic scale telling us not to have nightmares about the risk of our entire existence being stolen from us in the night.

However, it's not the book it should be, principally because it's too short, often reading as though it's either a precis of a longer and more detailed work or that Rees' editor was convinced by some of his earlier arguments and pressured him to finish the book before Armageddon overcame us all. Or, it may be simply to attract an audience for the book that might be put off by a larger and more complex work, which is a shame as some of his arguments don't carry the weight they could - for instance, there's little discussion of the risk of nuclear conflct beyond terrorism in the next century - if they were at greater length. One also wonders why Rees chose to devote so much space to the so-called Doomsday Argument when its philosophically rather weak (the most glaring flaw I spotted is that it could have been made at just about any time in the last several thousand years to 'prove' we would be extinct 'soon') when other areas are skirted over, but perhaps that's merely personal choice.

However, that doesn't stop this from being a generally interesting and informative book that's well worth reading, though one will have to resort to the extensive bibliography to get the real depth that would make the book a true classic.

A scientist's look at the end of the world, 07 May 2003
Interesting book, which would have been great with a slightly tighter focus. Sir Martin Rees tries to warn us that with ever-faster technological progress, the odds of a truly catastrophic mishap - either by accident or design - are going to be significant over the next century. He outlines 'familiar' dangers such as nuclear weapons, genetically engineered viruses, environmental hazards and includes more futuristic ideas about nanotechnology running amok and artificial hyperintelligences taking over.

Truly an interesting subject, and a good book, but unfortunately the ending maybe rambles off into a fairly generic speculation of humanity's potential future, should we succeed in not wiping ourselves out. The book takes a reasonably apolitical slant, which I think is a shame but maybe justified as the author is, after all, a scientist.

There are interesting thoughts on whether we should seek to ban certain lines of research on the grounds that the research itself is too dangerous, compared to the benefits, or that it might lead to potentially dangerous uses. There's a very interesting chapter on the philosophical, probabilistic Doomsday theories.

All in all, a good and quick read on an interesting, and unfortunately quite timely, subject.

Encouraging you to think, 09 Jun 2008
I won't go into much detail of how this book is written neither give this book moral evaluation like some people here do in their reviews. Especially the guy who gave it 1 star accusing Ms Jolie of doing little. Disgusted as that man probably wrote his wrote whilst seated at a comfy desk himself. Anyway, I personally enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it to my friends. Below is a brief list of pos/neg sides of it.
Positive:
- it gives you insight into the places most media have lost interest in, draws a vivid picture of places she visits in your own mind;
- you get to know Angelina better. And she doesn't disappoint you with her willingness to understand, help, her open mind and endless compassion;
- easy to read (well she can also be blaimed for simplicity of her language but I think in this case it was appropriate and nicely worded).
Negative:
- she shows little knowlegde of history and other cultures so this book can't be used as a guide into other cultures as some reviewers pointed out;
- it's too short!

This is a poorly written and factual book, 26 Mar 2008
I'm sorry but apart from supporting the causes of this woman (Angelina) this book is poorly slapped together with incorrect facts about Cambodia. I'm shocked, as this country is claimed to be her second home! How's that then? The Tuol Sleng Prison is called 'S-21' - NOT 5-21, the woman who is craddling her baby whilst having her picture taken is NOT having her head drilled at all, this device was made to ensure the person sitting for their portrait is sitting straight. These are pretty fundamental facts that have been misconstrued, had the book been edited or checked these would have been picked up.

I also have an issue with the sleeping in hotels with lovely beds, etc when you're dealing with refugees - what a slap in the face. I'm sorry but I have to say as a world traveller and one who ensures I intergrate with the locals this 'book' (and let's use this term loosely), is hopefully putting all profits into the refugee organisations out there - but sadly has probably only chosen Ms Jolie because of her celebrity fame. What a shame. There are many, many other bright, well educated, people doing jobs in these war torn countries that can't even get their medical supplies, are away from their families and do far more that buying children from around the world who cannot be heard. What on earth is the world coming to. These doctors, nurses and workers of the UN and other agencies are the true heros, not someone who buys children like they're in Selfridges and gets paid to do movies such as TombRaider. Very, very dissapointed.

Compassionate and educational, 15 Sep 2007
I highly recommend this book if you are interested in the world and other cultures. The style of writing makes this journal extremely easy to read, as Jolie doesn't use too many facts and figures (just enough), but tells the personal stories of the refugees she meets. The stories are heart breaking and overwhelming at times, yet also inspiration. Luckily, in the British press we do get to hear news from around the world, but not always in great detail. Jolie doesn't try to explain in too much detail why the countries have refugees, but it did inspire me to find out more. I have so much admiration for Jolie, as she didn't need to put herself in such (physically and emotionally) uncomfortable situations but chose to and still continues to raise money and awareness for people in such tragic circumstances. Other 'celebrities' could learn a lot from her.

eye-opening read, 22 Jun 2005
Books like this are not usually my cup of tea, prefering sci-fi and horror. However, being a huge admirer of Ms Jolie I decided to give this book a go.
She says that she isn't a writer but within the pages of this book are the most emotional, honest accounts i've ever read. You can't help but feel that you're taking this journey with her, and boy is it one hell of a journey! Even if you're not a film fan and have no idea who Angelina Jolie actually is, then this is a must read book. You can't help but gain a great deal of respect for the people that she writes about, it truely is an eye-opening read!
But be warned, it will bring a tear to your eye at many points along the way (and a few laughs!)

A very moving read., 31 Aug 2004
Angelina starts this book explaining to us, that she isn't a writer and almost apologises for that, Angy darling you are a really honest writer and that helps us focus on the true meaning and vision that she/ the book allows us to see.
I had an emotional roller coaster reading this...
Holds no punches with the reality of what has happened to these people and is still happening too, some parts really sickened me to read, I found myself looking away from the book and feeling so sick at what these people have gone through, children as young as two, I won't write about it here. I had no idea it was that bad but this is just a glimpse I'm sure that if I had seen first hand that it would be a lot worse. I bought this book as I am a big fan of A J, for her films and for her she is such a good role model, so caring and its great to see people that are wealthy and in a position to help those less fortunate. I am grateful for what I have, yeah sure we always want more, but this book really opened my eyes, and now I regularly donate money as much as I can afford to these worth while courses as stated in the book, if only more people would. I recommend this book if your a fan or not, as it makes you appreciate what we have, and forces you to look beyond our borders we think nothing of gulping down cough mixture for a little cough, would you or I have the spirit to fight on as they do if in that situation day in day out? I don't think I could... could you?

A valuable contribution to the development debate, 19 Dec 2008
Political correctness requires that we separate the world into two categories when talking about development - the developed and the developing nations, with one billion people living in the first set, and the other five making up the rest. These categories are insufficient, says Paul Collier, because there are some countries that are not developing, but actually moving backwards: the bottom billion, a "ghetto of misery and discontent", who are getting poorer every year. "Picture this," he writes, "as a billion people stuck in a train that is slowly rolling backwards downhill."

This is a book about that bottom billion, and the unique development challenges that they pose. In particular, Collier addresses four distinct 'traps' - landlocked countries, conflict, poor governance and natural resources, and explores some innovative solutions for overcoming each one.

While not without controversy, especially around his advocacy of military intervention, The Bottom Billion is refreshingly low on ideology and high on hard data. The whole book is based on original research, making this a valuable contribution to the debate for both experts and casual readers alike.

Great too for the non-expert, 28 Nov 2008
I can't really weigh this book relative to others on the subject, because it's the first that I've read on this topic...

But what I wanted to add to the other reviews is that, if you're someone like me, who does not work/study economics or international development, I can recommend this book without hesitation. It's a fascinating read and it's accessible for any background of reader.

After reading you'll probably feel a sense of frustration at how much more could be done and how much of our current efforts may be misdirected. But this is an improvement on the sense of hopelessness I had prior to reading the book; that the truly poor nations will always be that way.

Must read for anyone interested in poverty reduction, 30 Aug 2008
In my work over the last few years, struggling with the issues of development and poverty reduction, and I read a lot of books on the issues. Recently, I read one of the best books in the form of Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion.
Just as Mr. Collier says at the end of his book, discussions on poverty and development have over the last few years been dominated by two extremes: On the one extreme Mr. Jeffrey Sachs call for more aid to "end poverty", and on the other side, William Easterly's negativity that nothing really works (in the books The End of Poverty and The White Man's Burden, respectively).
Mr. Collier strikes a marvelous and necessary balance between these two. On one side, he says about Mr. Sachs:
"At present the clarion call for the left is Jeffrey Sach's book the end of poverty. Much as I agree with Sachs' passionate call to action, I think that he has overplayed the importance of aid. Aid alone will not solve the problems of the bottom billion - we need to use a wider range of policies."
Mr. Sachs is an advocate of more money will solve the problems, but as Mr. Collier puts well in the book, many of the problems related to poverty are structural, from lack of investement, infrastructure, education, conflict, to being landlocked. Some of these problems are not solved just with more money. Unfortunately, this is a tendency in development aid nowadays, perhaps as aid agencies and staff need to justify their existence, even increase it: the need of more money, much of it in the form of budgetary support, which goes directly to a poor country's budget, in ever bigger amounts. But the link to poverty reduction is awkward to say the least: as pointed out in both Easterly's and Collier's book, higher dependence on foreign aid hardly leads to poverty reduction.
How much did I see this in Mozambique: had any of the subsistence farmers I worked with ever benefitted from the Agricultural SWAp...?
Nevertheless, while one cannot argue that aid will help everything, one can not jump into the other side of "Nothing helps" like the old disillusioned Mr. Easterly does (in my personal view Mr. Easterly is the kind of person who would have let slavery continue, not because he agreed with it, but because "we cannot do anything about it"):
"At present the clarion call for the right is economist William Easterly's book The White Man's Burden. Easterly is right to mock the delusions of the aid lobby. But just as Sachs exaggerates the payoff to aid, Easterly exaggerates the downside and again neglects the scope for other policies. We are not as impotent and ignorant as Easterly seems to think."
As Collier amply argues for, there are many situations and examples that aid has helped and alleviated poverty. But as Mr. Collier also amply discusses and argues for, the aid money needs to be allocated in a well-planned way, and not ignoring the context: aid alone is unlikely to help.
I must admit that at first I found the book to start really slowly: Mr. Collier took time to explain his framework for analysis, ennumerating four "traps" which developing countries, or rather, the "bottom billion", the poorest of the poorest caught in a vicious circle of misery of landlockedness, resource trap, conflict and bad governance. These four traps are inter-related and Mr. Collier carefully presents his huge array of statistics to present his argument.
This part was a somewhat tedious read, but after passing this part, the book moves into more interesting areas, namely what can be done about it, the huge dilemmas and difficulties surrounding these issues.
Nevertheless, on a more critical view, the book's argument is built too much on statistics. It makes it powerful, but at the same time one can feel that the argumentation, like with all statistics, is political and absolutist: in social sciences, there are exceptions to all statistics! At the same time, some of the correlations, like for instance between post-conflict situations and democracy, seem so vague that I would never look at a specific situation with that data, but only focus on the context.
Personally, I like that he says it can be done - too often in the world people say: "there have always been poor people, and there always will be". While I don't deny this is true, I find it appalling that this should be used as an excuse: we have always had murders, rape, wars, but nobody in their right mind would say we should do nothing about it!
I like the book, because we finally have a well-written balance abut development aid, something that has been missing for a while as the issue is discussed more and more.

Hard-hitting indictment of development's failure , 01 May 2008
getAbstract finds that this concise, clearly written and hard-hitting book by Paul Collier, one of the world's leading experts on Africa, is a must-read for anyone concerned with development, economic justice, trade, immigration, terrorism and related issues. The author has scant patience with sacred cows of either the right or the left. He penetrates the fictions and fantasies that have helped drive not only unproductive but actually counterproductive policies on aid, trade, investment and more. The book is enlightening, and entertaining in the way that good satire is entertaining. It is also inspiring, since Collier goes beyond merely identifying problems: He offers credible suggestions for solutions.

Beyond the Survival of the Fattest, 30 Apr 2008
While this is a scholarly economics textbook, the author makes a deliberate and commendable effort to keep the language, structure and flow of complex ideas accessible and captivating to the general reader. Its scope and inspiration is universal but the studies are mainly centred on poor African countries caught in various traps: of conflict, dependence on natural resources, bad governance and unfavourable geography including unhelpful neighbours, harsh topography and bleak climate. Collier's basic message is upbeat: none of the traps is inescapable, in spite of the current low rate and low probability of sustained exit from a trap for the billion or so living in the no or negative growth countries.

In the first part of the book, the author draws on extensive in-depth collaborative research to make very subtle analyses of the relationship between conflict and under development. Regrettably, the end result has sometimes the ring of the medieval disputations on the sex of angels. The direction of causation is rarely straight forward even after exhaustive wading through pools of data.

The problem of human as well as financial capital flight as an obstacle to economic growth is dealt with at greater length and cogency. The new approach here involves treating the emigration of skilled and unskilled labour and expatriation of financial resources in the same way as a risk mitigation strategy for the individual. To retain both funds and skills will require elimination of the perceived investment risk profile of the country.

But how can we reduce the growth-negating resource capture by the elite, from aid, natural resources such as oil and minerals? Collier cites the impact of the Extractive Resources Transparency Initiative and the Charter on Blood Diamonds as instances of a fairly effective multilateral approach.

The author further explores the self-perpetuating monster of poor governance, underscoring the need to put in place effective mechanisms for restraint: electoral competition, checks