Carl Hammerdorfer

Genius

Reviewed: 01-04-24

How she builds, inhabits, and sets in motion such a cast of characters, God only knows. This is an illuminating period piece that has no parallel, IMO.

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Making “Expert” a Bad Word

Reviewed: 04-23-23

As a criticism of the arrogance, overreach, and ineffectiveness of the World Bank, IMF, and other development donors, this book is both damning and accurate. As almost every development practitioner knows, decisions made thousands of miles away in a conference room filled with a half dozen economists and MBA‘s at a whiteboard are more often than not doomed to failure. These are the experts whom Easterly seeks to excoriate, his former colleagues.

But he draws his target area -the category of experts and technocrats- too broadly. I have encountered and worked with hundreds of real experts in my 40 year development career: rice farmers, fruit dehydrators, dairymen, grain traders, lawyers, banker‘s, investors, poultry processors, university administrators, bovine embryo transplant experts, etc. The list goes on and on.

More often than not, these real experts have no part in or fealty for the bad expert behavior that Easterly outlines. They believe that the overpaid, highly-educated elites in Washington, Strasbourg, Rome, or Geneva should stop exercising control from thousands of miles away, and let them attempt to work with local partners at solving local problems.

If he had chosen a different title for this book, perhaps “the tyranny of of World Bank development economists“ I would have no quibble with him. Most of his criticisms hit the bullseye.

I also learned quite a lot about the early history of development. Overall, this is a very good listen. I wish Easterly had chosen someone more interesting to bring his material to life. The reader on this one had a very annoying, cadence and tone.

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Fun listen

Reviewed: 02-02-23

Great idea to take Kafka’s famous device and put it in our modern context of race and identity. naturally, my inclination was very much of the “oh, come on, racism isn’t that extreme,” genre. But then, after listening to the authors experience as a brown person in America after 911, it felt truer.

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Delightful Escape

Reviewed: 01-12-23

An intricate tale so well told is such a pleasure, particularly during these days of petty outrage and entitled fragility. Yes, Towles is prone to occasional romantic excess, but his characters are so authentic, his descriptions so captivating.

When this book ended I wanted to listen to it again to catch the clues I’d missed the first time through.

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Sometimes over the top

Reviewed: 02-21-21

An excellent and often exciting story that might have been even better without the hagiography and too frequent stereotypes of NGOs and bureaucrats.

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Entertaining, enlightening, moving

Reviewed: 04-13-15

I have a photo of my mother taken sometime in 1945 outside of Munich. She is 9 years old and in rags and is gathered around a US GI, with 7 or 8 other children. There are dozens of superlatives I could use to describe the book thief, but none do it justice. I'm grateful to the author for illuminating the humanity, humor, and horror of that time.

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indispensible

Reviewed: 10-20-13

This book brought the man and his times to life. It's better than any biography of George in its honesty and completeness.

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2 people found this helpful