Found this on my friend's bookshelf in Lima. From what I remember of Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point (I read a few chapters at a book store cafe a while back), Easterly has a similar approach of simplifying a complex phenomena by coining terms (here, Planners and Seekers) and employing a ton of analogies (like every other paragraph) to make his argument more accessible to a larger audience. He also repeats/emphasizes his points a lot, perhaps for the same reason..(which I found a little annoyin More...

William Easterly's poorly written challenge to Jeffrey Sachs and the global aid machine entitled, "White Man's Burden," was a selection from my Global Issues and Ethics book club at the Elliot Bay book company. Here is a link to an excellent review of Easterly's book. www.foreignaffairs.org/2006030... I agree almost completely with the author- Easterly has important points to make about accountability in global aid dispersement but his message is drowned in this book with his abuse of colleagues More...

If you read The End of Poverty, you should read this book. I love the idea of this book, which is to spend foreign aid money, however much, on individual programs that produce good results even, and perhaps especially, those programs that perform well at the individual, family, and village level. That said, the writing and editing of this book leave a lot to be desired. To get your effort's worth, read the introduction and the first few chapters, read the chapters at the end on successful progra More...

I think the problems and potential solutions presented in this book are of overwhelming importance for the aid community.

I can admit that Easterly's writing style is less than masterful, and that the examples and evidence that he uses is a bit hodge-podge and clearly not exhaustive. This book, by itself, does not provide a fool-proof case for Easterly's thesis.

However, I simply think this book is critically important because its easy to overlook the problems that Easterly brings up, and these pr More...

This book shatters mythologies held by utopian statists that humanity can be perfected if only we plan everything out in great enough detail with the wisest persons on the planet. Unfortunately, this is the opposite of what's needed: greater freedom to be given to individuals to allow them to unleash their creativity and problem-solving in as unrestricted a situation as possible. This book is a great accessory to Dambisa Moyo's expose "Dead Aid".

Jeffrey Sachs, a darling of the left, has his flaw More...

Aren't you all so happy that now that I'm in school, I can copy and paste my reading journals as goodreads reviews? :)

I’ve wanted to read this book for a long time, so I was excited to get started on it. The first chapter, I wasn’t feeling so sure about it. His introduction to global development issues seemed to be very market-heavy, and I kept thinking: Can we pursue this line of thinking without acknowledging the role that globalized market capitalism has played in creating the very economic i More...

Overall a pretty disappointing sequel, of sorts, to his earlier "The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics." The latter remains one of my favorite books, examining as it does the long, convoluted history of economic thought on development and how different theories, from Rostow's "Takeoff" to a singular focus on population control, or education, have, when implemented, failed to lift the Third World out of poverty. It was both a wonderful intellectual More...

This first quarter or so is reasonably interesting and brings a sort of political economy approach to understanding why development is often ineffective. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the book is a series of cherry picked positive and negative examples designed to support the thesis. They're not wrong, per say, but pointing out one Ghanian who has made good in life without development assistance doesn't really prove that development assistance doesn't help anyone.

Easterly acknowledges that More...

Easterly is highly critical of the approach of which he was a part for many years. As an economist with the World Bank he was one of the "Planners", those involved in aid and development that he criticizes for being the main architects of failure in the first world's attempt to help the poor of the world.

Top down planning from those not involved in the areas to be helped lead to wasted efforts, refusal to take responsibility and very loose goal setting allowing almost anything to be declared a More...

A book that says grand ideas are utopian can be a bit of a frustrating read. What other ideas does Easterly suggest? Despite this drawback, Easterly has done a good job criticizing how aid is currently handled and making a case for smaller, more targeted interventions rather than just money drops. His hope that aid organizations focus their missions on the needy than the donors, is somewhat naive, however. Donors are not typically aid experts and appealing to their wishes adds to NGO prestige an More...

The New York University professor and former World Bank economist, Bill Easterly, provides a scathing critique of the grand plans to transform entire Third World societies through development aid, as promoted by academic and other luminaries such as Jeffrey Sachs and Bono, as well as by many bilateral and multilateral development agencies. Building on a thorough historical analysis and deep understanding of how the development business works, Easterly convincingly argues that such utopian plans More...

As with all development books, some of the data here is hotly contested. Shortly after reading this book, I stumbled across a different study of mosquito nets in Africa that reached the opposite conclusion from the study that Easterly cites.

His overarching point seems in general to hold - the solution is to decentralize aid. It's a general economic point that I think most people can get on board with at a basic level. Instead of politicians/bureaucrats picking and choosing specific initiatives, More...

I have been really primed by all of the other authors in this field about what this book is about, so it is hard for me be be impartial in my review of this book. That being said this book is good but I have some reservations in saying it was great. At times I felt like it was a little bit insulting to my intelligence while at the same time it was interesting because of the counterarguments to traditional thinking in the development field he makes.

This book is almost a direct response, or count More...

This is one of the more disturbing books I have read, in the sense that it challenged my world view and made me question my field of study at the time (international development). In fact, this book really steered me in another direction at a crucial time in my life, while I was in grad school at NYU where Easterly is a professor. For those who work in international development, the idea that such well-intentioned projects may actually do more harm than good is deeply unsettling. Even more so be More...

This book was good, but it wasn't what I'd hoped it would be. I thought it would discuss colonialism. Instead, it was more about NGOs and government aid programs, and how they should be transformed. The author provided some great recommendations, such as supporting grassroots endeavors rather than top-down programs. He has good things to say about social entrepreneurism. Down with bureaucrats and "planners". Up with "searchers," people who look for markets and solutions, and make things happen. More...

I agree with most of Easterly's over-arching criticisms of humanitarian aid, but after a while, the book loses its incisiveness: rehashing, repeating, and reemphasizing the same points over and over again. Easterly seems to oversimplify development projects and workers into this stark contrast between "Searchers" and "Planners", as though these are diametrical opposites with no overlap. Can it not be the case that a "Searcher" also needs a plan for the future, and a "Planner" searches for soluti More...

"It is the job of economists to point out trade-offs; it is the job of politicians and Planners to deny that trade-offs exist." -William Easterly

This famous book decries the current state of Western aid agencies by emphasizing how inefficient these are at actually helping the poor. The book begins by establishing the terms Planners and Searchers. The Planners are most aid agencies, with big dreams and unrealistic expectations, that favor the idea of the Big Push. Proponents of the Big Push belie More...

I'd give this more like a 3.5 stars, though that isn't an option. Easterly seems to be basically right about his main arguments ("planning" doesn't work because of a lack of accountability and incentives for outcomes and no feedback loops, lack of knowledge of conditions, etc.). I found his warnings against "planners" that claim they know how to utterly transform other people's societies particularly convincing.

Ultimately, he recommends a pretty pragmatic reorientation of how/why aid is offered More...

Easterly's conclusion is controversial because he recommends a market solution to the problem of poverty in Africa. He argues that the best relief efforts are spear-headed by "searchers"--those who work locally to address real needs that emerge through effective systems of feedback. "Planners," on the other hand, develop "big plans" for saving Africa, like buying a million mosquito nets and shipping them to Africa, where they sit in crates in warehouses unused.

Easterly is acerbic, sharp, often More...

When this book was first recommended to me, I quietly asked, "It's not racist, is it? The title bothers me" and for the first chapter of the book, it continued to do so. In this case, he's not literally talking about actual white men, but instead quoting Rudyard Kiplings poem, "White Man's Burden" 1899. The ideas he puts forth in this book are similar to the ones I've developed while living out here in The Gambia. 1) NGOs/Aid, free of independent critique go unchecked 2) They serve the need they More...

The answer to all of your questions regarding international aid organizations, and why we don't seem to ever get anywhere.

Despite what should have been interesting material I found I had to force my self to finish the book after leaving it aside for many months.

Well researched at times it felt a bit too driven by statistics. The ideas in it - bottom-up rather than top-down - are not radical.

I would have liked a bit more outrage and naming of culprit organisations besides anodyne targets like IMF and World Bank. More gossip, back-stabbing and revelation of dirty deeds would have really livened the narrative up.

Still More...

This quote from the book pretty much sums it up:

“Westerners: don’t do things to or for other people without giving them a way to let you know—and hold you accountable for—what you have actually done to or for them.”

He took a few hundred pages to get there, but it was an interesting and important read (also amusing and conversational in tone -- helpful with this subject matter). For the past year or so I have been supporting Kiva.org, the microlending organization, and will even more happily cont More...

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 More...

At times this book is a little too critical and one sided in the defense of its position on aid from the bottom up, when what is needed is an embrace of a collective approach. However, there are some important elements to William's message.

I think it is important to be hopeful and ambitious, but I understand William's view that we need to also be pragmatic, maintain accountability and focus on results. I agree that we need to focus on objective outcomes, but certain interventions take time to h More...

I can't say that I agree with everything the Easterly says in this book, nor can I say that I completely trust his perspective, but his argument is compelling and worth listening to. To often people scramble about in an aimless effort to do "good" without taking the time to evaluate their efforts and see if they really are doing good. Easterly challenges many of the established practices of foreign aid and scrutinizes the results of the trillions of dollars that have been given to developing cou More...

As a development professional, I like to read books from all perspectives and I always find something interesting or inspiring in them. There were lots of good stories in this book about development initiatives at small scale that have worked well and that were inspiring enough. But, I did find the basic theme a bit simplistic -- Planners vs Searchers. Many planners in development do have some searcher in them; and many searchers have a bit of a planner in them. So, things aren't quite as black More...

This is an excellent little book built on the thesis that poor people aren't stupid. How refreshing is that? Still, when Easterly came to BYU and said that there was really nothing we can do for the poor, eh, I'm willing to suspend efficiency for a little ways. I know I like it when people give me presents and flowers. But I can see how important it is for us to be judicious and look to the numbers for results!


It's called White Man's Burden and its author, William Easterly, probably is getting More...

Easterly's work is a must read for anyone who is considering how they can lend a hand in the fight against poverty and suffering in the world. to that extent, it is both encouraging and sobering. by drawing a distinction between Planners - those who propose big, utopian projects meant to solve all the worlds problems - and Searchers - those who hit the ground, figure out what is actually going on and what tangibly helps - he creates a framework for assessing the failure of global aid and the lit More...

I've been interested in Development on and off since a few courses on Development Communications in college. More than that, however, this book ended up on my list as a sort of follow-up to Guns, Germs and Steel. That first book examined why the Rest ended up so poor, while this statistic-heavy yet surprisingly readable exploration of the failure of post WW2 foreign aid by an insider tackled "why are they still so poor in spite of all the attempts to rectify the situation."

In some ways its comp More...