num_pages: 272
description: A powerful portrayal of Jeffrey Sachs's ambitious quest to end global poverty The poor you will always have with you to cite the Gospel of Matthew 26:11. Jeffrey Sachscelebrated economist special advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations and author of the influential bestseller The End of Poverty disagrees. In his view poverty is a problem that can be solved. With single-minded determination he has attempted to put into practice his theories about ending extreme poverty to prove that the world's most destitute people can be lifted onto the ladder of development. In 2006 Sachs launched the Millennium Villages Project a daring five-year experiment designed to test his theories in Africa. The first Millennium village was in Sauri a remote cluster of farming communities in western Kenya. The initial results were encouraging. With his first taste of success and backed by one hundred twenty million dollars from George Soros and other likeminded donors Sachs rolled out a dozen model villages in ten sub-Saharan countries. Once his approach was validated it would be scaled up across the entire continent. At least that was the idea. For the past six years Nina Munk has reported deeply on the Millennium Villages Project accompanying Sachs on his official trips to Africa and listening in on conversations with heads-of-state humanitarian organizations rival economists and development experts. She has immersed herself in the lives of people in two Millennium Ruhiira in southwest Uganda and Dertu in the arid borderland between Kenya and Somalia. Accepting the hospitality of camel herders and small-hold farmers and witnessing their struggle to survive Munk came to understand the real-life issues that challenge Sachs's formula for ending global poverty. The Idealist is the profound and moving story of what happens when the abstract theories of a brilliant driven man meet the reality of human life.
language: English
title: The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty
publisher: Signal