Books like The Tyranny of Experts

01

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson · Economics

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that the fundamental difference between rich and poor countries is not geography, culture, or bad luck.

A kindred economics read.

02

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

Paul Collier · Economics

Paul Collier spent two decades as a development economist at the World Bank and Oxford before writing The Bottom Billion, and the book reflects that experience in a specific way: rather than offering a unified theory of why poor countries stay poor, it offers a careful, empirically grounded account of the different mechanisms — the traps — that keep the roughly fifty countries and one billion people in the most severe and persistent poverty from breaking out.

Both dig into development economics.

03

Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa

Dambisa Moyo · Economics

Dead Aid is Dambisa Moyo's argument that the system of aid flowing from rich countries and multilateral institutions to sub-Saharan Africa has not only failed to generate growth but has actively made things worse.

A kindred economics read.

04

The Road to Serfdom

F. A. Hayek · Politics

The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, is Friedrich Hayek's argument that central economic planning is incompatible with political freedom and will, regardless of intent, produce a form of totalitarianism.

A kindred economics read.

05

Capitalism and Freedom

Milton Friedman · Economics

Capitalism and Freedom was published in 1962, and the ideas it contains had been circulating even longer — the book grew from lectures Friedman gave at a 1956 conference.

A kindred economics read.

06

The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good

William Easterly · Economics

William Easterly spent two decades as a research economist at the World Bank before writing The White Man's Burden, and that institutional experience gives his critique of the development industry a quality that most outside critiques lack: he knows exactly how the machine works and why it produces what it does.

Shares development economics and poverty with The Tyranny of Experts.

07

Portfolios of the Poor

Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford, and Orlanda Ruthven · Economics

Portfolios of the Poor is one of the most methodologically unusual books in development economics.

Both dig into development economics.

08

Poverty, by America

Matthew Desmond · Economics

Poverty, by America is Matthew Desmond's follow-up to Evicted, and it makes a more explicit and polemical argument: poverty in the United States is not a natural condition or a problem of insufficient resources.

Both dig into poverty.

09

The Divide

Jason Hickel · Economics

The Divide is Jason Hickel's argument that global poverty is not a natural condition that development has failed to fully remedy, but a product of policies — colonial extraction, debt regimes, trade rules, and structural adjustment — that wealthy countries have imposed on poor ones.

Both dig into poverty.

10

Angela's Ashes

Frank McCourt · Memoir

Angela's Ashes is Frank McCourt's memoir of a catastrophically impoverished Irish Catholic childhood, first in Brooklyn and then in Limerick, during the 1930s and 1940s.

Both dig into poverty.

11

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

Katherine Boo · History

Behind the Beautiful Forevers is Katherine Boo's account of three years spent in Annawadi, a Mumbai slum built on reclaimed land next to the international airport.

Both dig into poverty.

12

Being and Nothingness

Jean-Paul Sartre · Philosophy

Being and Nothingness is Sartre's major philosophical treatise and the founding text of French existentialism.

Both dig into freedom.