This book discusses international economic development. Comprised of vignettes from over 35 years of the author's life, it follows his career as a development economist working in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.
The author's thesis, simply stated, is that the world's economy has developed in a perversely unsustainable fashion. He places much of the blame for the problems caused by development on the overemphasis on GDP as an indicator of development, regardless of social inequalities and externalities that may be caused by GDP growth.
Furthermore, he states that he worked to give extremely optimistic economic forecasts in order that developing countries could be saddled with huge loans from international financial institutions so that such countries would be unable to repay. The developing countries would thereby be placed in debt to international financial institutions and developed countries.
The book asks interesting questions about the nature of development, international trade, international organizations, and economic theory. Furthermore, the fantastic nature of the stories told in the book increases the level of fascination for the reader, as I repeatedly asked myself 'could this be true'?
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