Development Studies Books

Below is a good list of must reads for students interested in development studies. The list was compiled by The Guardian which also has other resources for students interested in development:

• Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy

• Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty

• Jagdish Bhagwati, In Defence of Globalisation

• Ester Boserup, Woman's Role in Economic Development

• Deborah Brautigam, The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa

• Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective

• Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

• William Easterly, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts To Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good

• Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World

• Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation

• Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor

• James Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine: "Development", Depoliticisation and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho

• Joseph Hanlon, Armando Barrientos, David Hulme, Just Give Money To the Poor: the Development Revolution from the Global South

• Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control

• Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity

• Dambisa Moyo, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is Another Way for Africa

• Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time

• CK Prahalad, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits

• Adam Przeworski, Michael Alvarez, Jose Antonio Cheibub, Fernando Limongi, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950-1990

• Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

• Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

• James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes To Improve the human Condition Have Failed

• Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom

• Joseph Stiglitz, Globalisation and Its Discontents