Books & Media Reviews
Film Mischaracterizes Humanitarian Aid Work
Hollywood’s Fictional Narratives have Real-World Consequences for Humanitarian Aid Opinion by Amy Leah Potter In 2017, I was briefly held at gunpoint by members of the Houthi Rebel group in Northern Yemen. My presence in their territory was questioned at a checkpoint, leading to my detainment. For...
Why Nations Fail, Famine and the Nobel Prize
The 2024 Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded in October to the authors Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson in part for the analysis of international inequalities in their best-selling 2012 book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (Crown Publishers), which arrays econo...
Stalled Progress Against Hunger for Third Consecutive Year
For the third year in a row, global hunger remains persistently high after the increase during and because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The United Nations’ State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024 (SOFI) report, released in July 2024, estimates that 733 million people across the globe a...
Book Classic: Famine, Conflict and Response by Fred Cuny
Book Classic: Famine, Conflict and Response: a Basic Guide By Fred Cuny, with Rick Hill (West Hartford, CN: Kumarian Press 1999) This basic, extremely readable text about famine prevention and relief remains a preferred textbook decades after first written by Fred Cuny, and...
BOOK REVIEW: The Enduring Struggle: The History of the U.S. Agency for International Development and America’s Uneasy Transformation of the World
BOOK REVIEW: The Enduring Struggle: The History of the U.S. Agency for International Development and America’s Uneasy Transformation of the World, by John Norris. 2021. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publisher. America's primary international assistance organization, for moving ...
The Razor’s Edge: Embezzlement, Corruption and Development in Ethiopia, a Novel (2022)
For anyone interested in learning what development work overseas entails and what work is like, there may be no better introduction than Robert Gurevich’s novel, The Razor’s Edge. Thinly modeled on his own experiences in Africa, with his protagonist, writing in the first person, caught between...
“Love and Liberation” Captures Voices of Local Aid Workers in Famine Zone
Lauren Carruth's important 2021 book, Love and Liberation - Humanitarian Work in Ethiopia's Somali Region (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press) fills a gap in the literature about aid programs by listening to the perspectives of those personnel delivering aid on the front-lines who are not expatria...
Resilience Book Review: Ending Hunger – The Quest to Feed the World without Destroying It
Anthony Warner's 2022 book "Ending Hunger - the Quest to Feed the World Without Destroying it" (Oneworld Press) attempts to challenge the myths he sees in social discourse in developed countries about how to address world food problems. Based on his popular blog "the Angry Chef", he tries to repla...
Documentary Looks Back at Norman Borlaug’s Career
A recent documentary available from the Public Broadcast System (PBS) and WGBH "The Man Who Tried to Feed the World" (2020) briefly surveys the motivations and achievements of food researcher, Dr. Norman Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his important innovations of better-producing types o...
Veterans Day Lessons for Current Livelihood Crisis
Veterans Day commemorates the many millions of American soldiers who returned home from wars with uncertainty about their futures and livelihoods. Veterans have faced an extended transition period as unemployed workers seeking to enter an often transforming economy. A prime example was at the en...
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