Country Analysis Issues
>Books on the drivers of political and economic stability
Clash of Civilizations, The
Samuel Huntington is a serious scholar with a passion for the politically incorrect. Above all, he believes in the power of culture – tricky, since anything one says about the culture of any specific ethnic group immediately sounds like prejudice....
Coming Anarchy, The
Robert Kaplan is a travel writer, and a good one. And from this – a commentator on world politics, both controversial and astute. His books, Balkan Ghosts, Ends of the Earth, The Coming Anarchy and Warrior Politics (see separate entry),...
Culture Matters
This edited volume, compiled by Lawrence Harrison and Samuel Huntington, brings together the most crucial arguments on whether culture and values “shape human progress.” Mostly, the book is one-sided on the affirmative, though famed economist Jeffrey Sachs offers a bit...
Elusive Quest for Growth, The
William Easterly, a World Bank economist, proves an expert tour guide to the blunders the development community has made over the decades. "Economists' adventures and misadventures in the tropics" is the pop-sounding subtitle. In the main Easterly has written an...
Future of Freedom, The
Fareed Zakaria, a well-known commentator on world affairs, here proves himself a democracy skeptic. Zakaria points out that democracy without liberalism is a roadster without brakes -- looking good, but headed for a crash. In much of the poor world,...
Guns, Germs and Steel
As a biologist, Jared Diamond stepped on a lot of toes – historians, political scientists, economists – when he declared that he could explain “the last 13,000 years” of human history. But he did it with the best of intentions...
Kimchi Matters, The
An award-winning book on country analysis by the Editors of Countryrisk.com. We'll refrain from commenting ourselves and let others do the talking: The Harvard Business Review: "powerful." Trends magazine: "the authors' analysis of political stability mixes humor, drama, and an...
Mystery of Capital, The
Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto launched a mini-revolution with his book, The Other Path, in the mid-1980s. This was a man peddling something truly new: capitalism for the poor. De Soto explained that Peru’s poor didn’t have legal ownership of...
Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists
Raghuram and Zingalel are two University of Chicago profs who have a surprising and powerful insight: the greatest enemies of market reform in poor countries are often rich businessmen. It's certainly counterintuitive. But the standard image of capitalists implementing ruthless...
Trust
“A nation’s well-being, as well as its ability to compete, is conditioned by a single, pervasive cultural characteristic: the level of trust inherent in society.” Frances Fukuyama, famous for declaring the “end of history,” in this book turns to the...
Wealth and Poverty of Nations, The
This book is a sweeping world history, with a guiding theme: that culture determines national success. By historian David Landes, it is the work of an elder scholar reflecting on the vastness of what he knows. Landes references a stunning...
World on Fire
Amy Chua launched a high-profile salvo in the "democracy sucks" movement of 2003. Democracy -- and markets -- are great in theory, Chua said, but given the realities on the ground, may not work for many poor countries. Chua's argument...
