Jeffrey Sachs The End of Poverty: How we can make it happen in our lifetime. - Reviewed by Charlotte Alfred

Sachs, a world-renowned economist and special adviser to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, has had a lot of practice making his specialist knowledge accessible and in conveying the centrality of his discipline to development, skills he perfects in ‘The End of Poverty'. The book begins with an overview of different countries' economic situations, condemning the theoretical debates and ‘black and whites' of modern development economics in favour of a method of “differential analysis”. Only an in-depth understanding of different factors affecting a country/region can produce successful economic reform.

From Poland to Bolivia to India , Sachs records his personal involvement in many countries economic crises' and recoveries', and describes lessons of experience for countries stuck in a poverty trap. His confidence in the possibility of the end of poverty is not naivety, but backed by data. Sachs' lucid style, peppered with personal anecdotes and data he has compiled, gives his ambitious topics weight and vibrancy.

At first the simple cover and foreword by Bono had made me sceptical that I would have heard it all before. I could not have been more wrong. This book doesn't give you a ‘this is how things are' without a ‘this is why', ‘this is how things change' and ‘this is how things could be'. I now honestly believe that they could.