NoApparentMotive

Attentive readers will have noticed that I've not been posting much lately. I can't say with any certainty that that is about to change, but I'm hoping to be a bit better through the summer.

Most immediately, I've updated my contact information on the contact page. I was receiving several thousand emails per week. Spam emails, not letters from readers, so I decided to pull the plug on my old email account. If you've sent an email to the old john@NoApparentMotive.org address any time in the last year, you can be sure that I haven't received it. My apologies. I've posted a new contact email address on the "Contact Me" page. I'm hoping that Gmail's email filter will help with the spam. But, don't forget that a machine at Google will read all your email. So, if you have anything sensitive or confidential to write, be elliptical or use some form of encryption!

The listserv of the Union of Radical Political Economists (URPE) recently had a series of posts recommending non-standard economic development texts. I've pulled together the suggestions below. Mathew Forstater, Laura Ebert, Khalil Tian Shahyd, Julio Huato, Kathy McAfee, Peter Kriesler, Roz, and Siobhan McGrath all contributed to the list.

I am embarrassed to say that I haven't read a single book on the list (I'm interested in the topic, but don't actually work in this area). Nevertheless, I would add three titles that I can't believe didn't make it: Ha-Joon Chang's Kicking Away the Ladder; his book with Ilene Grabel, Reclaiming Development: An Alternative Economic Policy Manual; and Victor Bulmer-Thomas's The Political Economy of Central America since 1920.

In alphabetical order by author or editor:

• Tim Allen and Alan Thomas (eds.), Poverty and Development, Oxford University Press, 2000.
• Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital, Oxford University Press, 2006.
• David N. Balaam, Michael Veseth, Michael Veseth, Introduction to International Political Economy, Prentice Hall, 2004.
• Amit Bhaduri and Deepak Nayyar, The Intelligent Person's Guide to Liberalization, Penguin Books, 1996.
• J.M. Blaut, The Colonizer's Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History, Guilford, 1993.
• James Boyce and Betsy Hartmann, Quiet Violence: View from a Bangladesh Village, Food First, 1985.
• Ha-Joon Chang (ed.), Rethinking Development Economics, Anthem, 2003.
• David Alexander Clark (ed.), The Elgar Companion To Development Studies, Elgar, 2006.
• Jim Cypher and Jim Dietz, The Process of Economic Development, Routledge, 2007.
• William Easterly, The Elusive Quest for Growth, MIT Press, 2002.
• Peter Griffiths, The Economist's Tale, Zed Books, 2003.
• Ankie Hoogvelt, Globalization and the Postcolonial World: The New Political Economy of Development, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
• Jomo K.S. (ed.), The Long Twentieth Century: The Great Divergence: Hegemony, Uneven Development and Global Inequality, Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Jomo K.S., The Long Twentieth Century: Globalization Under Hegemony: The Changing World Economy, Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Rajani Kanth (ed.), Paradigms in Economic Development, M.E. Sharpe, 1994.
• R. Kiely, Industrialization and development: a comparative analysis, UCL Press, 1998.
• Philip McMichael (ed.), Development and Social Change, A Global Perspective, Pine Forge Press, 2003.
• E. Wayne Nafziger, Economic Development.
• Thomas Oatley, International Political Economy, Longman, 2007.
• Richard Pomfret, Development Economics, Prentice Hall, 1997.
• Phillip W. Porter and Eric Sheppard, A World of Difference, Guilford, 1998.
• Vijay Prashad and Howard Zinn, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, New Press, 2007.
• Debraj Ray, Development Economics, Princeton University Press, 1998.
• J. Timmons Roberts and Amy Bellone Hite (eds.), The Globalization and Development Reader: Perspectives on Development and Social Change, Blackwell, 2006.
• Ann Seidman, An Economics Textbook for Africa, Methuen, 1980.
• Ann Seidman, Robert B. Seidman and Janice Payne (eds.), Legislative Drafting for Market Reform: Some Lessons from China, Macmillan, 1997.
• Dieter Senghaas, European Experience: A Historical Critique of Development Theory, Berg, 1992.
• Stephen Smith, Ending Global Poverty, Palgrave, 2005.
• Adam Szirmai, The Dynamics of Socio-Economic Development, Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• A.P. Thirlwall, Growth and Development, Book Academy, 2002.
• Mohammed Yunus, Banker to the Poor, Public Affairs, 1999.