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Book Information
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Bloomberg • Forbes • The SpectatorRecipient of Foreign Policy's 2013 Albie AwardIn 2006, Jeffrey Sachs—celebrated economist, special advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations, and author of the influential bestseller The End of Poverty— launched the Millennium Villages Project, a daring, $120-million experiment designed to test his theories about ending poverty. For six years, Nina Munk shadowed Sachs on his trips to Africa, listened in on conversations with heads-of-state and humanitarian organizations, and immersed herself in the lives of people in two remote African villages. Munk came to understand the real-life issues that challenge Sachs’s formula for ending global poverty. The Idealist is the profound and moving story of what happens when the abstract theories of a brilliant, driven man meet the realities of human life.

Book ID Asin: 076792942X
Book Title: The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty
Book Author: Nina Munk
Book Format and Price:
Book Format Name: Kindle
Book Format Price: $9.51
Book Format Name: Audiobook
Book Format Price: $0.00
Book Format Name: Hardcover
Book Format Price: $29.96
Book Format Name: Paperback
Book Format Price: $17.71
Book Format Name: Audio CD
Book Format Price: $—
Book Price: $17.71
Book Category: Books, Politics & Social Sciences, Politics & Government and unknown
Book Rating: 166 ratings
Book Product Detail

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Anchor; Reprint edition (October 7, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 076792942X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0767929424
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.1 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.11 x 0.58 x 7.99 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #115,952 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#75 in Sustainable Business Development
#128 in Globalization & Politics
#212 in African History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.5 out of 5 stars 166 ratings

Review
Recipient of Foreign Policy's 2013 Albie AwardBloomberg "Best Books of 2013"Forbes "Best Books of 2013"The Spectator "Best Books of 2013"Canada's National Business Book Award FinalistISI’s Henry and Anne Paolucci Book Award Nominee"Munk draws a nuanced portrait of Sachs and his Millennium Villages Project . . . worth taking the time to read it. It’s a valuable—and, at times, heartbreaking—cautionary tale." —Bill Gates"A sharply rendered and deeply disillusioned account of [Jeffrey Sachs'] personal quest to end poverty. . . . With impressive persistence, unflagging empathy and journalistic derring-do, Ms. Munk returns over a five-year period to Dertu and one other village to document the project's progress. . . . Heartbreaking." —The Wall Street Journal "One of the most readable and evocative accounts of foreign aid ever written, The Idealist shows that virtually nothing about such aid is ever easy. . . . A masterful tale of good intentions gone wrong." —William Easterly, Barron’s“A stark reminder that the war against poverty is not yet won. A must-read.” —Dambisa Moyo, author of Dead Aid"Writing accessibly about development economics is a high-wire act, but Munk accomplishes it brilliantly. She shadows Sachs as he cajoles world leaders to fund his Millennium projects, and also visits those places to tell the whole story. The final chapter, in which Munk interviews a chastened Sachs (usually an oxymoron), is particularly devastating." —Foreign Policy"A fascinating portrait of an innovative thinker as well as a fair-minded examination of his methods. It’s also a testament to the enduring value of old-fashioned, shoe-leather reporting—it should be read not just in policy circles but also at J-schools." —Vanity Fair“Magnificent. . . . An absolute must-read for anyone who is interested in doing good for those in need.” —The Christian Science Monitor"Munk tracks a messianic economist’s quixotic attempts to show that he can end African poverty. In one village his team gets farmers to grow maize instead of traditional matoke; there are no buyers for the bumper crop, and rats end up eating much of it. Munk describes a growing gulf between good intentions and hard reality with nuance and sensitivity." —Forbes"An engaging, eye-opening read." —The Guardian"A highly readable examination of Jeffrey Sachs’s Millennium Villages Project in Africa"—Financial Times"The Idealist tracks the messianic economist Jeffrey Sachs’s doomed attempt to solve African poverty by establishing a network of model villages where his pet theories could be tested before being escalated. The author, Nina Munk, who spent six years interviewing Sachs and visiting the Millenium Villages, is a delicate, careful writer. She not only reminds us that there are good, solid reasons why certain areas of the world remain desperately poor, she raises troubling questions about the credibility of an economist embraced by rock singers and film stars." —The Spectator"A fine writer with a gift for deploying spare, vivid detail, Munk overcomes the burden of what could be duller-than-dirt subject matter—the politics of foreign aid; the ins and outs of Uganda's matoke market; NGO infighting over anti-malaria efforts—into a lively and at times, quite funny book." —Fortune"A deep and important book. . . . The Idealist tells the stories behind the numbers and its evidence is as compelling and as important as anything in the data." —The Lancet"Munk is a sly, relentless reporter with a gift for wedding her observations to a fluent, even graceful, writing style" —The Globe & Mail"This book is stark proof that approach just does not work. . . . The world needs to pay attention to these lessons and stop wasting resources." —Bloomberg"Nina Munk's brilliant book on [Jeffrey] Sachs' anti-poverty efforts, chronicles how his dream fell far short of reality" —Reason"Written over six years, with exhaustive on-the-ground reporting from two African communities that are part of MVP village clusters, [Nina] Munk’s book is a readable and fast-paced chronicle of the real-world consequences of elite intellectual arrogance....Munk’s authoritative telling of Sach’s story is most valuable as an exhortation to intellectual humility, and a compulsively readable portrait of a man without any." —Commentary "A fascinating and essential exploration of what goes wrong when unchecked audacity and clinical precision encounter the frailties, ambiguities, and unpredictabilities of human beings, societies and histories." —The Cleveland Plain Dealer"Not only an important book, but a truly enjoyable read. She does not boast, but the reader cannot avoid the impression that her intrepid years in Sachsland have demanded all the inner steel of the most hardened explorer or war correspondent." —The Weekly Standard “Students of economic policy and altruistic do-gooders alike will find Munk’s work to be a measured, immersive study of a remarkable but all-too-human man who let his vision get the best of him.” —Publishers Weekly "Trenchant and thought-provoking." —Kirkus Reviews "A fine contrarian polemic full to brimming with excellent reporting." —The Globe & Mail "Heart-rending. . . . The catalogue of bright ideas that go awry would be funny if it weren’t so tragic." —National Post "A testament to the enduring value of old-fashioned, shoe-leather reporting—it should be read not just in policy circles but also at J-schools.” —Vanity Fair Daily "A devastating portrait of hubris and its consequences.” —Pacific Standard "A fascinating and essential exploration of what goes wrong when unchecked audacity and clinical precision encounter the frailties, ambiguities, and unpredictabilities of human beings, societies and histories.” —The Cleveland Plain Dealer “Nina Munk has written a fascinating book about a fascinating man—and even more important, about a set of ideas that are intriguing and important.” —Fareed Zakaria, editor-at-large of Time magazine and author of New York Times Bestseller The Post-American World“Jeffrey Sachs is a global phenomenon: no one thinks as big, makes a more passionate case for foreign aid, and works as hard to make the dream of ending global poverty a reality. This terrific book gives you a ringside seat on Sachs’s tireless global quest to get donors, governments, international agencies, private firms, and poor farmers to buy into his vision of economic development. Nina Munk’s portrayal goes beyond the man and his dream; it is a clear-headed depiction of the challenges the world’s poorest face as they struggle to improve their lives.” —Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University and author of The Globalization Paradox "A riveting narrative that must be read to understand why the over $700 billion pumped into Africa by the West since 1960 has achieved so little. This powerful book will shake up the foreign aid development community." —George Ayittey, President of the Free Africa Foundation, and author of Africa Unchained "A powerful exposé of hubris run amok, drawing on touching accounts of real-life heroes fighting poverty on the front line." —Robert Calderisi, author of The Trouble with Africa “The Idealist confirms that in the quest to end extreme poverty in Africa, the truly wise and resonant voices are those of the Africans themselves.” —Roger Thurow, author of The Last Hunger Season "Nina Munk’s incisive, moving and elegantly written report takes us to Africa to see first-hand that the poor don’t need one more central planner with the prescription for prosperity. What the poor need is what really made the rich rich – the legal devices to join their continent’s vast, dispersed natural and human resources into valuable combinations through their own collective action." —Hernando de Soto, President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, and author of The Mystery of Capital
About the Author

Nina Munk, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, is a journalist and the author of Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner. She was previously a senior writer at Fortune, and before that a senior editor at Forbes. Her work has appeared in Vanity Fair, the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, Fortune, and the New York Times. She lives in New York.
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Book Review
Name: T. Graczewski
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: SachssFolly
Date: Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2014
Review: The paperback edition of “The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty” was eagerly anticipated. Well, by me, at least. I have spent the past year reading broadly on the topic of economic development. Sachs’s 2005 bestseller, “The End of Poverty,” is by far the most optimistic and prescriptive of the lot. He declared triumphantly in that book: "The wealth of the rich world, the power of today's vast storehouses of knowledge, and the declining fraction of the world that needs help to escape poverty all make the end of poverty a realistic possibility by the year 2025." After serving a year on the ground as an economic development officer in Kandahar, Afghanistan in 2010, I’m skeptical of such sweeping and confident assertions concerning development. Nevertheless, I admired Sachs for the courage of his convictions.According to her own account, author Nina Munk came to this project with an objective, open mind; if anything, she genuinely wanted to believe in the feasibility of Sachs’s grand and noble vision of eradicating poverty in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. After six years researching this book, however, Munk is no fan of Jeffrey Sachs. In fact, I’m fairly confident she grew to loathe the man. By the end of the book, she dismissively refers to his many op-ed pieces in prominent publications as “jeremiads,” his rapid-fire Twitter feed as embarrassing “screeds,” the man once tenured as a Harvard economics professor at the ridiculously tender age of 28 as a “sawed-off shotgun, scattering ammunition in all directions.”Sachs is a controversial a character; his own book makes that clear. There are only two types of people in the world, according to “The End of Povery”: smart, noble people who agree with and unquestioningly offer their enthusiastic support to Jeffrey Sachs, and ignorant, unprofessional, and painfully misguided buffoons who do not. One of the main themes in “The Idealist” is that Sachs simply does not tolerate dissent, no matter how honestly and innocently voiced. “In effect,” Munk writes, Sachs demands that you “trust him, to accept without question his approach to ending poverty, to participate in a kind of collective magical thinking.” Any criticism or questioning of his vision or approach is reliably met with “…his usual impatience and blind faith,” often ending in cruelly directed scorn and humiliating name-calling, Or, as Munk describes it in one of her rare charitable moments toward the subject of her book: “It’s never easy to disagree with Jeffrey Sachs.”One of the things I like and respect about Sachs is that he brings an entrepreneur’s vision and passion for the cause of poverty alleviation. I’ve lived and worked in Silicon Valley for 15 years and have observed that many legendary tech entrepreneurs (Gates, Jobs, Bezos, Musk, etc.) are famously prickly and impatient with those who fail to see the future that is so clearly visible to them. For these forward thinkers, arguably the genuine geniuses amongst us, “all seems impossible until it becomes inevitable.” They live a different world where “no idea is too far fetched,” which is how Munk describes Sachs.Not too surprisingly, Sachs’s strident criticism of economic-development-business-as-usual has been met with hostility from those who work in that system. Julie McLaughlin, the World Bank’s lead health specialist for Africa, echoes a common sentiment about Sachs, as quoted by Munk in “The Idealist”: “Jeff’s a televangelist, which seems to go over with some people, but I don’t find him all that articulate or charming. I don’t want to be lectured to.” Ah, yes, the lecturing. That’s how most development professionals unfavorably view Sachs’s approach to debate according to the author. “I don’t want to argue with you, Jeff, because I don’t want to be called ignorant or unprofessional,” one development professional is quoted as saying to Sachs in a crowded room after he delivered one of his predictably condescending, didactic, and undiplomatic public speeches on all that is wrong with development work in Africa. “I have worked in Africa for thirty years. My colleagues combined have worked in the field for one hundred plus years. We don’t like your tone. We don’t like you preaching to us. We are not your students. We do not work for you.” The bitterness and (I dare say) hate drip off every sentence. These people – the professionals at USAID, The World Bank, DFID, etc. – have developed a visceral hatred for Jeffrey Sachs. It’s a bug that Nina Munk evidently contracted during her six years on the job.But what really “Hath Sachs Wrought?” He boldly defined a plan to eradicate poverty in the most depressed regions of the world. His ambitious goal: to help get these god-forsaken communities at least onto the first rung of the economic development ladder. His tireless evangelism funded the first phase of his vision to the tune of $120M, most of it from liberal philanthropist George Soros. Sachs’s narrative ensured that outside economic support was only temporary. Once the combined basics of clean water, healthcare, malaria-preventing bed nets, transportation networks and so on were provided for, the local population would pull themselves up by their bootstraps and carry themselves out of poverty and into the twenty-first century as self-sufficient and innovative market capitalists. For many experienced sub-Saharan Africa development practitioners, it all sounded hopelessly naïve, almost farcical. But, again, my view is (and was): why not give it a try? In 2008, I was director of corporate development at Intuit when we paid $170M for Mint.com, an online personal financial management solution that was barely earning $1M a year. The price tag of $120M to test Sachs’s ambitious proposal to eradicate poverty felt shamefully modest.And that’s where this book left me wanting, perhaps because it’s still too early to tell. The author focuses on only two of Sachs’s model “Millennium Development Villages,” one in the badlands of northeastern Kenya, on the parched and lawless border with Somalia, and the other deep in the heart of rural Uganda. Both have experienced mixed results. On the one hand, the self-sufficiency that Sachs predicted was not irrefutably taking hold. On the other hand, pumping millions of dollars into these remote and miserably poor communities obviously had a positive impact: malaria rates were down dramatically; as was infant mortality; more people than ever had corrugated tin roofs over their homes, the African equivalent of a television in every house and two cars in the driveway. But how much of this superficial success is sustainable? Once Sachs and his dollar-rich foundation move on, will these villages be any better off ten or twenty years down the road?The author’s mind is evidently made up. She dismisses even the early success of the project as illusionary. “By 2010 the Millennium Villages Project had become a cumbersome bureaucracy with hundreds of dependent employees,” she writes. “One hundred twenty million dollars and Sachs’s reputation were riding on the outcome of this social experiment in Africa. Was anyone prepared to smash the glass and pull the emergency cord?” But is it really necessary to pull the emergency cord just now, especially given the price tag for Phase 2? When you consider that top hedge fund managers earn over $1 billion (yes, billion) annually, is asking for another $100M that absurd? I realize that Sachs is a polarizing figure. In fact, I’m not particularly predisposed to like him; I’d rather kick him in the shins if I could, to tell the truth. But I’m not convinced that Sachs’s pie-in-the-sky vision has been fully discredited, at least not after reading “The Idealist,” which most certainly sought to discredit the man and his vision. Munk declares unequivocally that Sachs “…misjudged the complex, shifting realities in the villages. Africa is not a laboratory; Africa is chaotic and messy and unpredictable.” I’m 70% confident that she’s correct, although she didn’t make her case nearly as airtight as she evidently thinks she did. The most damning evidence of Sachs’s ill will presented by Munk is that he dismissed the assistance of celebrated MIT economist Esther Duflo to rigorously test the effects of intervention in the MVPs. Sachs evidently rejected such help because it treated global poverty alleviation like “testing pills.” It’s a shame that Sachs isn’t more open to a rigorous and scientific approach to testing his results.I put this book down feeling even more depressed about the fate of sub-Saharan Africa than when I started, which was pretty depressed. The cover photo in the paperback edition shows Sachs surrounded by African villagers. It's a photo well selected by Munk and her editors as it captures perfectly the mix of Sachs's arrogance and ridiculousness that Munk conveys in this book. I just sincerely hope that she isn't nearly as accurate as believes that she is.

Name: Hill Country Bob
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: DoesanyoneknowhowtoprovideeffectiveairtoAfrica
Date: Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2013
Review: Does anyone know how to cure poverty in Africa? Jeffrey Sachs is a very talented economist at Columbia University. This book is about his commitment to raise money and use it to change in three years three different areas in sub Sahara Africa. He is a visionary, and certainly seems driven to help people change their lives and thus become better for the future for themselves and their families and neighbors and friends and relatives. I consider that this was the modern equivalent of what the Bible talks about in teaching a man to fish and thus he can feed himself for a lifetime, vice just feeding hem for the day, which really does not solve his problem in his life. He set up and got funded an expensive and elaborate program to help a small part of Africa as a demonstration for three years. The thought was to integrate it into the area so that it became stand alone for the people and country.The author tracked the program for the three years, and saw the start of many good events that improved peoples lives. However, the programs seemed to create a new set of expectations, and transitioning out of the program when the money stopped was a real issue. In some cases the men were used to being herdsmen, but that way of life could not support them ,and so they needed to change. However the men did not want to change and seemed to consider the new jobs that were available to be beneath their dignity. In other cases, the aid team had a pickup truck to use for their errands. However, some of the people that they were trying to help regarded the pickup truck as something between a taxicab and an ambulance. When a toilet was built, and required periodic maintenance, the maintenance was not done by any of the natives. This was a simple task that the aid team could not get transitioned, and was typical of the issues. Overall, it seemed to me that the assistance was dependent to an overwhelming extent to the members of the aid team.Getting the people to be able to do for themselves was not something that Jeffrey Sachs and his team understood how to accomplish which is really unfortunate. Unfortunately, the basic message that I got is that in general, we in the west to not know how to effectively help the poor people of Africa so that they can help themselves improve their lives. It may not be possible for the good willed people of the west to provide constructive help to the people of Africa. History is full of many efforts with the worlds best intentions, but lousy results. In many cases the money is stolen and used to buy fancy cars like Mercedes or sent out of the country to some officials foreign bank account.A well done but depressing book. Well worth the read if you want to understand aid at a practical level.


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