Reading for relaxation, professional interest and personal development in a time of Corona

REPRESENTING THE INTERESTS OF INDEPENDENT AID PROFESSIONALS EVERYWHERE

Book Club

These books have been recommended by fellow aid-workers as being useful for work and play. Just to warn you, they're not novels and therefore probably not best suited for that relaxing R&R beach break. Perfect for those bleak days of Covid-19 self-isolation, though !? You are also unlikely to find them in bookshops or at airports. Let us know of other titles that deserve to be here by writing to info@aidessentials.org

Amazon UK

Absolute Disaster

Absolute Disaster explores ninety-nine commonly held misconceptions about natural disasters, and answers questions such as ... Can mobile phones help calculate how many people have died in an earthquake? Does teaching children to swim help them survive a flood? Can cholera be predicted from space? Do disasters result in baby booms? Is sending relief supplies always the right response? Does coordination work? If charity represents how people would like the world to work, then Absolute Disaster shows how it actually does. An invaluable contribution to the field of disaster management. Dr. Peter Walker (Former Director, Feinstein Center, Tufts University)

Amazon UK

Understanding The Humanitarian World

A large and complex global humanitarian response system made up of a multitude of local, national and international actors carries out a wide variety of responses. Understanding this intricate system, and the forces that shape it, are the core focus of this book by Dan Maxwell and Kirsten Gelsdorf.

Amazon UK

Factfulness

Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases. One of the most important books I ever read. Bill Gates

Amazon UK

Lords of Poverty

Each year hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on foreign aid throughout the world. Only a small portion ever reaches its intended recipients. Thanks to bureaucratic inefficiency, misguided policies, large executive salaries, political corruption, and the self-perpetuating overhead of the administrative agencies, much of this tremendous wealth is frittered away, as this alarming and comprehensive book by Graham Hancock reveals.

Amazon UK

The Intelligence Trap

We assume that smarter people are less prone to error. But greater education and expertise can often amplify our mistakes while rendering us blind to our biases. This is the 'intelligence trap'. In this book, David Robson demonstrates how to apply our intelligence more wisely when navigating ambiguity and uncertainty.

Amazon UK

Thinking Fast & Slow

While we like to think of ourselves as rational in our decision making, the truth is we are subject to many biases. At least being aware of them will give you a better chance of avoiding them, or at least making fewer stupid decisions.

Amazon UK

Prisoners of Geography

All ideas are constrained by geography. Prisoners of Geography looks at the past, present and future to offer an essential insight into one of the major factors that determines world history. Tim Marshall puts the 'geo' back into geopolitics.

Amazon UK

Blink

Malcolm Gladwell's book shows us how to bring out the best in our thinking and become better decision-makers in our homes, offices and in everyday life. Just as he did with his revolutionary theory of The Tipping Point, he reveals how we can transform our relationships, the way we consume, create and communicate, how we run our businesses and even our societies.

Amazon UK

The Coming Plague

As the global village becomes smaller, as destruction of the rainforests continues, and as bacteria increasingly develop resistance to overused antibiotics, the threat of new diseases such as Covid-19 becomes inevitable. Laurie Garrett, arguably the world's foremost epidemiologist, wrote this book over 20 years ago. That's what makes it so fascinating: She is being proven right.

Amazon UK

Rules of Contagion

Popular science at its best. The prose is sparkling and clear. The subject is deeply fascinating and highly relevant. Touching on psychology, medicine, network theory and mathematics, epidemiologist Adam Kucharski has written a brilliant and authoritative guide to the hidden laws of how things spread - from ideas and memes, to violence and deadly viruses like Covid-19. It is hard to imagine a more timely book ... much of the modern world will make more sense having read it. The Times

Amazon UK

Combat Civilian

Gilbert Greenall charts the transformation of humanitarian assistance, revealing some of the contradictions and absurdities of the multi-billion dollar aid industry of today, including the military risks and political constraints.

Amazon UK

Everything That Follows

Whether you're about to go on a trip overseas, or just want to know what to do when the going gets tough, this guide will help you survive. Excellent, eye opening work. If you are going overseas to work, no matter in what capacity, you need to read this book, and take it with you. Richard H.Randall, Major USA Army (retd.)

Amazon UK

How to Become an Aid Worker

Relevant information and advice to help you make more informed decisions about what steps to take and how to reflect on whether this is the right career path for you.

Amazon UK

Hostile Money

Hostile Money looks at the impact of war and revolution on national currencies from Rome's civil war in the first century BC to the twenty-first-century invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the economic sanctions and cyber-warfare of today.

Amazon UK

East West Street

East West Street by acclaimed international human rights lawyer Philippe Sands looks at the personal and intellectual evolution of the terms 'genocide' and 'crimes against humanity'. A 'must read' for any aid worker bearing witness to war crimes or 'ethnic cleansing' James Shepherd-Barron (Author of This Constant Evil - On the origins of ethnic cleansing)

Amazon UK

Enlightenment Now

By its very nature, our work focuses on some of humankind’s worst problems and it’s easy to feel that the world is becoming a steadily worse place to live. This book presents a compelling case that the opposite is actually true - even in many of the places humanitarians work - and that all of humankind’s problems are solvable. I found it both thought provoking and encouraging Simon Manning

Amazon UK

The Culture Map

The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries by Erin Meyer

Amazon UK

A Bed For The Night

David Rieff's compelling 2002 book reveals how humanitarian organisations, having lost sight of their purpose and having allowed a gap to grow between their noble ambitions and actual capabilities, must reclaim their independence.

Amazon UK

Emergency Sex

Brutal and moving in equal measure, Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures) explores the West's indifference to developing countries and the UN's repeated failure to intervene decisively. Beautifully and poignantly written, the book provoked massive controversy on its initial publication in 2006.

Amazon UK

Humanitarian Ethics

Humanitarians are required to be impartial, independent, professionally competent and focused only on preventing and alleviating human suffering. It can be hard living up to these principles when others do not share them.

Amazon UK

The Golden Fleece

The Golden Fleece by Antonio Donini delves into questions that are rarely asked and seldom answered. It examines the impact of manipulation on the effectiveness of humanitarian action.

Amazon UK

Winner Takes All

The New York Times groundbreaking investigation of how the global elite's efforts to "change the world" preserve the status quo and obscure their role in causing the problems they later seek to solve. An essential read for understanding some of the egregious abuses of power that dictate how international development is actually done.

Amazon UK

Dull Disasters

With innovations in science and finance, Stefan Dercon and Dan Clarke suggest that shocks don't need to become full blown disasters and that making disasters 'dull' must be our aim.