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

William Easterly was a senior economist at the World Bank for more than sixteen years and has worked in many areas of the developing world. He is a professor of economics at New York University.

From one of the world's best-known development economists—an excoriating attack on the tragic hubris of the West's efforts to improve the lot of the so-called developing world

In his previous book, The Elusive Quest for Growth, William Easterly criticized the utter ineffectiveness of Western organizations to mitigate global poverty, and he was promptly fired by his then-employer, the World Bank. The White Man's Burden is his widely anticipated counterpunch—a brilliant and blistering indictment of the West's economic policies for the world's poor. Sometimes angry, sometimes irreverent, but always clear-eyed and rigorous, Easterly argues that we in the West need to face our own history of ineptitude and draw the proper conclusions, especially at a time when the question of our ability to transplant Western institutions has become one of the most pressing issues we face.

The New York Times - Virgina Postrel

Easterly asks the right questions, combining compassion with clear-eyed empiricism. Bono and his devotees should heed what he has to say.