State governments are spending a lot, accomplishing too little, and failing to meet their responsibilities to the public. In this book, John Brandl argues that the usual remedies for ineffective government bureaucracy--cutting or adding to budgets, urging civil servants to become more entrepreneurial, hiring tougher managers, or appointing smarter bureaucrats--won't provide substantial, long-term improvement. Examining public schools Brandl points out that although real spending per student has tripled in the last 30 years and the average class size has shrunk from 27 to 17, educational performance "has become a national disgrace." He provides alternative policies that rely on harnessing self-interest through competition and incentives and encouraging affiliations that inspire community to forge a strong connection between spending and results.

Disaster strikes, transforming cities and towns into graveyards and wastelands in a matter of minutes. But help is on its way: news channels and social media relay the information to all corners of the globe in real-time, mobilising hundreds of people and organisations to aid. Yet, with standard relief packages regardless of the location, and a lack of effort taken to match volunteers' skills with tasks, just how effective are we at helping others?Many people want to do good, but they like to do it at their convenience. These attempts at helping often fail, and the blame invariably falls on the disaster victims, rather than looking at the suitability of aid provided. Such help, offered without a thorough understanding of the context or the impact of actions, can create situations that leave the victims worse off than before.So how can we create real sustainable impact?Most communities have a lot of unused human capacity. When offering help, many aid providers fail to engage the local communities, thus excluding a critical group of people with the knowledge of local ways and needs.This book elaborates on a simple principle essential to effective aid — Never Help: Engage, Enable, Empower and Connect.It is important that we fully understand the problem before we try to solve it, and who better to help us with solutions than the local community?

For more than thirty-five years, Thomas W. Dichter has worked in the field of international development, managing and evaluating projects for nongovernmental organizations, directing a Peace Corps country program, and serving as a consultant for such agencies as USAID, UNDP, and the World Bank. On the basis of this extensive and varied experience, he has become an outspoken critic of what he terms the "international poverty alleviation industry." He believes that efforts to reduce world poverty have been well-intentioned but largely ineffective. On the whole, the development industry has failed to serve the needs of the people it has sought to help. To make his case, Dichter reviews the major trends in development assistance from the 1960s through the 1990s, illustrating his analysis with eighteen short stories based on his own experiences in the field. The analytic chapters are thus grounded in the daily life of development workers as described in the stories. Dichter shows how development organizations have often become caught up in their own self-perpetuation and in public relations efforts designed to create an illusion of effectiveness. Tracing the evolution of the role of money (as opposed to ideas) in development assistance, he suggests how financial imperatives have reinforced the tendency to sponsor time-bound projects, creating a dependency among aid recipients. He also examines the rise of careerism and increased bureaucratization in the industry, arguing that assistance efforts have become disconnected from important lessons learned on the ground. In the end, Dichter calls for a more light-handed and artful approach to development assistance, with fewer agencies andexperts involved. His stance is pragmatic, rather than ideological or political. What matters, he says, is what works, and the current practices of the development industry are simply not effective.

A revolutionary approach to poverty that takes human irrationality into account-and unlocks the mystery of making philanthropic spending really work. American individuals and institutions spent billions of dollars to ease global poverty and accomplished almost nothing. At last we have a realistic way forward. Presenting innovative and successful development interventions around the globe, Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel show how empirical analysis coupled with the latest thinking in behavioral economics can make a profound difference. From Kenya, where teenagers reduced their risk of contracting AIDS by having more unprotected sex with partners their own age, to Mexico, where giving kids a one-dollar deworming pill boosted school attendance better than paying their families to send them, More Than Good Intentions reveals how to invest those billions far more effectively and begin transforming the well-being of the world.

This dazzling debut collection from a Seattle native features stories evocatively set along the Northwest coast, stories of quiet but astonishing lives. Here are ferry workers, carpenters, park rangers, living alongside crab factories, cranberry bogs, the misty ocean. Here are people puzzled by the processes of growing up, leaving home, parenting, aging. Here are people who realize there are second chances, that from illness can come hope, that from family can come a greater sense of self. Psychologically complex and glowing with warmth, these rich stories recall Tobias Wolff and Raymond Carver. A MARINER PAPERBACK ORIGINAL.

"Student loan debt in the U.S. now exceeds $1 trillion, more than the nation's credit-card debt. This timely book explains how and why student loans evolved, the concerns they've raised along the way, and how each policy designed to fix student loans winds up making things worse. The authors, a father and son team, provide an intergenerational, interdisciplinary approach to understanding how, over the last 70 years, Americans incrementally, with the best intentions, created our current student loan disaster. They examine the competing interests and shifting societal expectations that contributed to the problem, and offer recommendations for confronting the larger problem of college costs and student borrowing in the future"--

The tenth-anniversary edition of the book that changed lives in profound ways, now with a new foreword and afterword. In 2006, a groundbreaking feature-length film revealed the great mystery of the universe—The Secret—and, later that year, Rhonda Byrne followed with a book that became a worldwide bestseller. Fragments of a Great Secret have been found in the oral traditions, in literature, in religions and philosophies throughout the centuries. For the first time, all the pieces of The Secret come together in an incredible revelation that will be life-transforming for all who experience it. In this book, you’ll learn how to use The Secret in every aspect of your life—money, health, relationships, happiness, and in every interaction you have in the world. You’ll begin to understand the hidden, untapped power that’s within you, and this revelation can bring joy to every aspect of your life. The Secret contains wisdom from modern-day teachers—men and women who have used it to achieve health, wealth, and happiness. By applying the knowledge of The Secret, they bring to light compelling stories of eradicating disease, acquiring massive wealth, overcoming obstacles, and achieving what many would regard as impossible.