Kristin Helmore and Naresh Singh

Kristin Helmore and Naresh Singh present the details of the widely tested Participatory Assessment and Planning for Sustainable Livelihoods methodology, or PAPSL, a holistic approach to poverty eradication that empowers the poor to analyze their circumstances, identify their priorities, and launch their own development initiatives.  More >

Pascal James Imperato, with an foreword by Robert J. Koenig

The Bamana people are known for their rich artistic traditions, including the creation of masks, statues, door locks, headdresses, and ritual and utilitarian objects: Their door locks are among the most remarkable of all African art. Sculpted of wood in a rich variety of forms, they depict mythological and historical figures, social events, and representational figures—crocodiles, lizards,  More >

George Ann Potter

In this era of economic globalization, the debt owed by the poorest countries allows the richest to have enormous influence over most Southern economies. George Ann Potter brings together a wide range of arguments and views to examine the effects of economic globalization on the lives of the poor majority in debtor countries, showing how the issue of debt can illuminate the process of the  More >

Guy Poitras

In the face of potent domestic and global forces, the U.S., Canada, and Mexico—the NA-3—have devised an enterprise that promises to draw them closer together in the twenty-first century. Inventing North America is an attempt to understand the NA-3's unique brand of regionalism within an increasingly globalized world. Poitras dissects the commonalities and differences among the  More >

Ian Smillie, editor

Patronage or Partnership brings a new perspective to the subject of building local capacities in emergency and postemergency situations. Recognizing the real trade-offs that exist between aid workers acting quickly in the midst of an emergency, on the one hand, and working to build longer-term local skills, on the other—and critically examining this dilemma from local perspectives drawn from  More >

Elisabeth Rhyne

Microcredit in Bolivia grew and became successful in only a decade, lifting an enormous segment of the country’s population into the financial mainstream in the process. The example of its high-achieving institutions charted a course for the development of the international microfinance field. In this gracefully written book, Elisabeth Rhyne brings the history of the microfinance movement to  More >

Henry Veltmeyer and Anthony O'Malley, editors

With a focus on community-based processes, Transcending Neoliberalism examines the dynamics of change in Latin America arising out of the search for alternative forms of development.  More >

Carme Riera, translated by Roser Caminals-Heath with Holly Cashman

Carme Riera, hailed as a dominant literary force in Spain, has long merited recognition in other countries. Her prose, with all its intricacy, humor, and grace, has been skillfully transported from Castilian and Catalan to English, and has been brought to our shores with its riches intatct. The seven short stories in this collection focus on a broad range of characters—predominantly  More >

John Isbister

In Capitalism and Justice, John Isbister takes a practical approach to some of the most important questions of economic and social justice in the context of the global economy: How big a spread of incomes from rich to poor, for example, is consistent with social justice? Should inheritances be abolished? What sort of commitment should a rich country like the United States make to foreign aid?  More >

John L. Hirsch

Sierra Leone's bitter experience with civil war garnered international attention only after the May 1997 coup, though the conflict between the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and successive governments had raged for at least a decade against the backdrop of more than three decades of progressive state collapse. John Hirsch traces Sierra Leone's downward spiral, drawing on his first-hand  More >