Paul Polak’s Top 10 Books

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1 Following is a list of the ten books that have been most helpful in increasing my understanding of the world.

1)    Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, by E. F. Schumacher (Blond & Briggs, 1973)

2)    The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, by William Easterly (Penguin Press, 2006)

3)    Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962, by Frank Dikotter (Walker & Company, 2011)

4)    Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948, by Madeleine Albright (Harper, 2012)

5)    Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way, by Jon Krakauer (Anchor, 2011)

6)    Hell’s Cartel: IG Farben and the Making of Hitler’s War Machine, by Diarmuid Jeffreys (Metropolitan Books, 2008)

7)    Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, by Jung Chang (Simon & Schuster, 1991)

8)    Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (Knopf, 2005)

9)    Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II, by Arthur Herman (Random House, 2012)

10)  The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits, by C.K. Prahalad (Wharton School Publishing, 2004)