Economics · Similar reads
Books like The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good
The best books like The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good are The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, and Guns, Germs, and Steel. The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly is about foreign aid, development economics, poverty. If that's what drew you in, here are 12 books that share its DNA — each summarized on Superbook, and ready to chat with in the app.
- The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
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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.
Shares foreign aid and development economics with The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good.
Read the summary → - Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari · History
Sapiens traces the full arc of human history from the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa roughly 70,000 years ago to the present.
A kindred economics read.
Read the summary → - Guns, Germs, and Steel
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Jared Diamond · Science
Guns, Germs, and Steel is Jared Diamond's attempt to answer a question posed to him by a Papua New Guinean politician named Yali: why did Europeans end up with so much cargo — wealth, technology, power — while other peoples had comparatively little?
A kindred economics read.
Read the summary →
- Freakonomics
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Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner · Economics
Freakonomics is economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner's argument that economics — properly understood as the study of incentives — can explain things that look, on the surface, like they have nothing to do with money.
A kindred economics read.
Read the summary → - Thinking, Fast and Slow
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Daniel Kahneman · Psychology
Thinking, Fast and Slow is Daniel Kahneman's account of the two cognitive systems that govern human thought.
A kindred economics read.
Read the summary → - The Tyranny of Experts
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William Easterly · Economics
William Easterly spent years at the World Bank before concluding that international development as practiced by the major institutions is not only ineffective but actively harmful — harmful not primarily because it fails to deliver growth, though it frequently does, but because it suppresses the rights and agency of the people it claims to help.
Shares development economics and poverty with The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good.
Read the summary → - Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa
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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.
Both dig into foreign aid.
Read the summary → - Portfolios of the Poor
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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.
Read the summary → - Poverty, by America
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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.
Read the summary → - The Divide
10
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.
Read the summary → - Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
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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.
Both dig into institutions.
Read the summary → - Angela's Ashes
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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.
Read the summary →
Books like The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good: quick answers
What are the best books like The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good?
The best books like The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly are The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, such as foreign aid, development economics, poverty.
What should I read after The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good?
A natural next read after The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good is The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier. Shares foreign aid and development economics with The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. Other strong choices are Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.
What books are similar to The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly?
The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good centers on foreign aid, development economics, poverty. Books with a similar feel include The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, The Tyranny of Experts by William Easterly — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
