The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

Narrator Gideon Emery

In the universally acclaimed and award-winning The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier reveals that
50 failed states - home to the poorest one billion people on earth - pose the central challenge
of the developing world in the 21st century. The book shines much-needed light on this group
of small nations, largely unnoticed by the industrialized West, that are dropping further and
further behind the majority of the world's people, often falling into an absolute decline in
living standards.A struggle rages within each of these nations between reformers and corrupt
leaders - and the corrupt are winning.

Collier analyzes the causes of failure, pointing to a set of traps that ensnare these
countries, including civil war, a dependence on the extraction and export of natural resources,
and bad governance. Standard solutions do not work, he writes; aid is often ineffective, and
globalization can actually make matters worse, driving development to more stable nations. What
the bottom billion need, Collier argues, is a bold new plan supported by the Group of Eight
industrialized nations. If failed states are ever to be helped, the G8 will have to adopt
preferential trade policies, new laws against corruption, new international charters, and even
conduct carefully calibrated military interventions. Collier has spent a lifetime working to
end global poverty. In The Bottom Billion, he offers real hope for solving one of the great
humanitarian crises facing the world today.

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