My connection with the Ford Foundation goes back to 2003, when I was selected as a Ford Scholar and given truly generous assistance through the end of my undergraduate years. These days, one of my staff members is participating in one of their five-year community leadership programs. The free books program is just another of the many ways that they are working to empower communities in Oregon. So, check it out.

Select Books page

The request form includes a place to suggest additions to their list. I had two. One was Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, which I am having my staff read; they are kindly indulging my professorial tendencies, but (say) they really find it thought-provoking and useful. The other is Getting Funded: The Complete Guide to Writing Grant Proposals, by Mary Hall.

So, a question. If you could suggest one or two great additions to their free book list, what would they be? Why?

Both make my heart happy by containing a colon in the title, and both have inspired me to pick up my phone in the middle of a sentence and call someone–anyone–to talk about the contents. So far, though, both do little to challenge capitalism itself as necessarily creating conditions of poverty and uncertainty. For Sachs, the consumerism of wealthy nations is the ticket out of poverty for the poorest nations, even if that ticket is just for a round trip to a sweatshop that will pick up and move elsewhere as soon as the workers start to ask for a bit more a la Oliver Twist.

Elizabeth Warren’s essay in the Ending Poverty anthology contains some of the more remarkable assertions I’ve read about how Americans spend their money. It’s counterintuitive and thought-provoking, and I’ll write about it more later.