Recipient of Foreign Policy's 2013 Albie Award — and, at times, heartbreaking— cautionary tale." — Bill Gates— The Wall Street Journal 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— Vanity Fair— The Christian Science Monitor— Forbes— The Guardian— Financial Times— The Spectator— FortuneThe Idealist tells the stories behind the numbers and its evidence is as compelling and as important as anything in the data." — The Lancet— The Globe & Mail— Bloomberg—Reason — Commentary —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 — Publishers Weekly—Kirkus Reviews —The Globe & Mail "Heart-rending. . . . The catalogue of bright ideas that go awry would be funny if it weren’t so tragic." —National Post —Vanity Fair Daily —Pacific Standard —The Cleveland Plain Dealer Time magazine and author of New York Times Bestseller The Post-American World The Globalization Paradox Africa Unchained 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 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
Vanity Fair contributing editor Munk (Fools Rush In: Jerry Levin, Steve Case, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner) spent six years chronicling the Millennium Villages Project, the pet project that lauded economist Sachs (The End of Poverty) launched in 2006. The project’s goal was an audacious attempt to prove Sachs’s well-intentioned, but ultimately naïve theories about ending extreme poverty in Africa by focusing on a handful of carefully selected villages with the expectation that their halo effect would spread throughout the country. Munk artfully observes how Sachs’s infectious enthusiasm and optimism bring attention (and funding, including million from George Soros) to the fledgling organization at home and abroad. Sachs ably illustrates how tactics like lacing mosquito nets with insecticides to fight malaria can make significant headway in achieving a larger goal of helping communities improve their circumstances and chances for development.” It’s a noble effort, but Sachs and his compatriots soon find that they wildly underestimated the difficulty of distributing those crucial nets, the impact of drought, as well as the learned helplessness of the recipients. All of these factors contribute to a less-than-ideal outcome. 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. Agent: Elyse Cheney, Elyse Cheney Literary Associates. (Sept.)
Narrator Susan Nezami presents Munk’s six-year study of Jeffrey Sachs and the Millennium Villages Project in Africa. Economist Sachs had the best of intentions when he launched the project with the aim of eliminating poverty by providing financial support to boost the extremely poor into a more sustainable existence. Nezami, in a measured and journalistic tone, details the factors that prompted the Millennium Villages’ creation, the project’s administrative structure, and the problems that ended up plaguing the effort. Nezami is dispassionate in reporting these challenges as well as Sachs's evolving realization that he had neglected to account for some human factors that could make or break the project as a whole. S.E.G. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine
DECEMBER 2013 - AudioFile
Narrator Susan Nezami presents Munk’s six-year study of Jeffrey Sachs and the Millennium Villages Project in Africa. Economist Sachs had the best of intentions when he launched the project with the aim of eliminating poverty by providing financial support to boost the extremely poor into a more sustainable existence. Nezami, in a measured and journalistic tone, details the factors that prompted the Millennium Villages’ creation, the project’s administrative structure, and the problems that ended up plaguing the effort. Nezami is dispassionate in reporting these challenges as well as Sachs's evolving realization that he had neglected to account for some human factors that could make or break the project as a whole. S.E.G. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine
DECEMBER 2013 - AudioFile
A journalist's probing account of renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs' Utopian experiment in ending global poverty. In 2005, Sachs, a "guru" to celebrity activists like Bono and Angelina Jolie, published a best-selling book, The End of Poverty , which claimed that poverty could be eliminated by 2025. His proposal was simple. Developed nations and private donors would pool together massive amounts of foreign aid to invest in forms of self-help that included fertilizer and high-yield grain to improve agricultural output and mosquito nets to prevent malaria. Starting in 2006, Vanity Fair contributor Munk (Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner , 2004) followed Sachs on his quixotic quest. She traveled with him on several occasions to Africa, where she watched as he and his team of development experts worked on the Millennium Villages Project, a five-year experiment designed to improve the economic and social well-being of 12 sub-Saharan villages. Sachs' success with the first Millennium Village in rural Kenya gave him the validation he needed to approach philanthropists like billionaire George Soros and ask for the funds he needed to implement his larger project. However, Sachs underestimated the difficulties he would encounter. Drought, political violence, aging infrastructure, traditional cultural values and resistance to change all undermined the goals of the project--as did the presence of other forms of foreign aid. In some areas, U.N. assistance programs fostered a dependency on outside sources that served as a deterrent to self-empowerment and created what one of Sachs' colleagues called "refugee syndrome." Munk is most effective in her depiction of the dangers inherent in imposing theories on the complex and ever-changing lives of real human beings. Radical new ideas are necessary to facilitate change, but no matter how brilliant, they will always and invariably have their limits. Trenchant and thought-provoking.
