Mile
Zero

Sebastian Mallaby's The World's Banker is half modern history of the World Bank and half biography of recent Bank President James D. Wolfensohn. In both cases, it is admiring and yet critical. Mallaby has clearly been charmed by Wolfensohn, but the portrait that eventually emerges is that of a brilliant man simultaneously blinded by, and insecure in, his own brilliance. The Bank itself is portrayed in a similar light: an institution with great power and knowledge that, under Wolfensohn, finds itself caught between politicians that expect miracles and NGOs bent on its destruction.

Despite such a conflicted description, Mallaby still manages to express his admiration for the Bank's work, and makes a convincing case for its success. Perhaps the book's greatest accomplishment is that it provides a personable layman's guide to the role of the Bank. Having worked at the Bank for almost two years now, but not having gone through any formal orientation, The World's Banker cleared up a lot of questions for me, and provided a lot of historical context for the observations I've made. Whether you agree with his ultimate conclusions--and I would argue that he comes across as far too glib when dismissing the concerns and works of many NGOs--you could do a lot worse than this as a text for understanding why the World Bank is not actually a Bank, and how its role in development has changed over the last fifty years.

Speaking of glibness, I also picked up--but could not bring myself to complete--Joe Stiglitz's Globalization and its Discontents this weekend. It is not that Stiglitz is a bad writer, or a bad economist. The former is certainly not true, and while I am not an expert the latter also doesn't seem to be the case. Rather, it's the tone and subject of the book, which are not immediately evident, that drove me away.

Perhaps I will return to it later.