The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
by Paul Collier (2007)
A cogent and powerful empirical analysis of the "traps" in which failed states are caught - civil conflict, dependence on exploitation and export of natural resource, geography, and poor governance - and the implications of their continuing exclusion from hope for progress. Collier then goes on to articulate the means to address these traps, and the compelling reasons for doing so.