Essential Development Studies Books

1950s:

Discourse on Colonialism (1950) Cesaire

The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957) Memmi

1960s:

The Wretched of the Earth (1961) Fanon

False Start in Africa (1962) Dumont

Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare (1968) Nkrumah

1970s:

Collective Choice and Social Welfare (1970) Sen

Class Struggle in Africa (1970) Nkrumah

Rules for Radicals (1971) Alinsky

A Theory of Justice (1971) Rawls

The Social Consequences of Resettlement (1971) Colson

The Struggle Continues (1973) Nkrumah

Unequal Development (1976) Amin

Peasants into Frenchmen (1976) Weber

Orientalism (1978) Said

The Rational Peasant (1979) Popkin

1980s:

Markets and States in Tropical Africa (1981) Bates

Imagined Communities (1983) Anderson

Rural Development (1983) Chambers

Silent Violence: Food, Famine & Peasantry in Northern Nigeria (1983) Watts

Surplus People (1985) Platzky & Walker

Sweetness and Power (1985) Mintz

Delinking (1985) Amin

Weapons of the Weak (1985) Scott

Decolonizing the Mind (1986) Ngugi

The Concept of Human Rights in Africa (1989) Shivji

The Violence of the Green Revolution (1989) Shiva

1990s:

Anti-Politics Machine (1990) (Practicing & Framing) Ferguson

Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (1990) North

The Scramble for Africa (1992) Pakenham

The Black Man's Burden (1992) Davidson

Culture & Imperialism (1993) Said

Moving the Centre (1993) Ngugi wa Thiongo

Encountering Development (1994) Escobar

The Two Faces of Civil Society: NGOs and Politics in Africa (1996) Ndegwa

Whose Reality Counts? Putting the First Last (1997) Chambers

The Racial Contract (1997) Mills

Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda (1998) Uvin

Seeing like a State (1998) Scott

Infections and Inequalities (1999) Farmer

Moral History of the 20^th Century (1999) Glover

King Leopold's Ghost (1999) Hochschild

Decolonizing Methodologies (1999) Smith

Development as Freedom (1999) Sen

2000s:

The Mystery of Capital (2000) de Soto

When Victims Become Killers (2001) Mamdani

Civil Society and Development (2001) Howell & Pearce

Kicking Away the Ladder (2002) Chang

Letting them Die (2003) Campbell

War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004) Hardt & Negri

Reclaiming Development (2004) Chang

Cultivating Development (2004) Mosse

Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (2005) Farmer

Bury the Chains (2006) Hochschild

Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (2006) Acemoglu & Robinson

The Will to Improve (2007) Li

The Origin of Wealth (2007) Beinhocker

Silences in NGO Discourses (2007) Shivji

The White Man's Burden (2007) Easterly

Does Foreign Aid Really Work? (2008) Riddell

Ending Aid Dependence (2008) Tandon

World Poverty and Human Rights (2008) Pogge

Famine Crimes (2009) De Waal

Civil Resistance and Power Politics (2009) Roberts & Ash

2010s:

Dead Aid (2010) Moyo

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism (2010) Chang

Partner to the Poor (2010) Farmer

Poor Economics (2011) Banerjee & Duflo

Can Intervention Work? (2011) Stewart & Knaus

Origins of Political Order (2011) Fukuyama

The Idea of Justice (2011) Sen

One Illness Away (2011) Krishna

Creating Capabilities (2011) Nussbaum

Social Life of Disease (2011) Willrich

Why Nations Fail (2012) Acemoglu & Robinson

Getting Better (2012) Kenny

From Poverty to Power (2012) Green

The Quest for Prosperity (2012) Lin

The Price of Inequality (2012) Stiglitz

Globalectics (2012) Thiong'o

Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (2013) Abu-Lughod

Critique of Black Reason (2013) Mbembe

The Almost Revolution (2013) Carothers and Gramont

Poor Numbers (2013) Jerven

Social Movements and Market Transformations (2013) Kapstein and Busby

The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development (2013) Andrews

Foreign Intervention in Africa (2013) Schmidt

The Making of a Better World (2014) Eyben

Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier (2014) Li

Capital (2014) Piketty

Navigating Complexity in International Development (2015) Burns & Worsley

Give a Man a Fish (2015) Ferguson

The Politics of Evidence and Results in International Development (2015) Eyben et al (Eds)

The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa (2015) de Waal

The Great Surge (2015) Radelet

How Change Happens (2016) Green

Global Inequality (2016) Milanovic

How China Escaped the Poverty Trap (2016) Ang

Encountering Poverty (2016) Roy, Negron-Gonzales, Opoku-Agyemang, Talwalker

Doughnut Economics (2017) Raworth

Black Rights / White Wrongs (2017) Mills

Can We Know Better? Reflections for Development (2017) Chambers

Why We Lie About Aid (2018) Yanguas

How to Rig an Election (2018) Cheeseman and Klaas

Human Rights in Africa (2018) Ibhawoh

Epistemic Freedom in Africa (2018) Ndlovu-Gatsheni

Capitalism, Alone (2019) Milanovic

Necropolitics (2019 translation) Mbembe

Gambling on Development (2022) Dercon