- Hardcover: 272 pages
- Publisher: Oxford University Press (Aug 15 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0199569843
- ISBN-13: 978-0199569847
- Product Dimensions: 22 x 14.4 x 3.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 481 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#258,135 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #55 in Books > History > Africa > East Africa
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"Thank God for great journalism. This book is a much needed, exhaustively researched and effortlessly well written recent history of Ethiopia. A book that strips away the cant and rumour, the pros and antis and thoroughly explains the people, politics and economics of that most beautiful nation. A superb and vital piece of work by someone who clearly loves the country of which he writes." --Bob Geldof
"No outsider understands Ethiopia better than Peter Gill. He combines compassion with a clinical commitment to the truth. He writes with verve and an eye for telling detail. The result is a major contribution to the compelling story of this remarkable nation." --Jonathan Dimbleby
"Famine and Foreigners is the essential book on Ethiopia, the world's crucible for hunger and poverty -- and development theory and practice. Moving between the lives of ordinary Ethiopians and the controversies among their leaders and the theoreticians of international development, Peter Gill guides the reader through a fascinating story of suffering, resilience and enthusiasm - often misguided - for formulae for development." --Alex de Waal, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and author of 'Famine Crimes'
"The great Ethiopian famine changed everything and nothing. It fundamentally altered the rich world's sense of its responsibility to the hungry and the poor, but didn't solve anything. A quarter of a century on, we're still arguing about the roots of the problem, let alone the solution, and - though there has been progress - Ethiopia's food insecurity gets worse, not better. Peter Gill was one of the most thorough and effective television journalists of his generation. He was there in 1984 and his work at the time added up to the most sensible, balanced and comprehensive explanation of what had happened. Twenty-five years later, he's gone back to test decades of aspiration against the realities on the ground. It's a book that bridges journalism and history, judicious analysis with a strong, and often gripping, narrative. Always readable, but never glib, this is a must for all those who think there is a simple answer to the famine, still waiting in the wings." --Michael Buerk
"No outsider understands Ethiopia better than Peter Gill. He combines compassion with a clinical commitment to the truth. He writes with verve and an eye for telling detail. The result is a major contribution to the compelling story of this remarkable nation." --Jonathan Dimbleby
"Famine and Foreigners is the essential book on Ethiopia, the world's crucible for hunger and poverty -- and development theory and practice. Moving between the lives of ordinary Ethiopians and the controversies among their leaders and the theoreticians of international development, Peter Gill guides the reader through a fascinating story of suffering, resilience and enthusiasm - often misguided - for formulae for development." --Alex de Waal, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and author of 'Famine Crimes'
"The great Ethiopian famine changed everything and nothing. It fundamentally altered the rich world's sense of its responsibility to the hungry and the poor, but didn't solve anything. A quarter of a century on, we're still arguing about the roots of the problem, let alone the solution, and - though there has been progress - Ethiopia's food insecurity gets worse, not better. Peter Gill was one of the most thorough and effective television journalists of his generation. He was there in 1984 and his work at the time added up to the most sensible, balanced and comprehensive explanation of what had happened. Twenty-five years later, he's gone back to test decades of aspiration against the realities on the ground. It's a book that bridges journalism and history, judicious analysis with a strong, and often gripping, narrative. Always readable, but never glib, this is a must for all those who think there is a simple answer to the famine, still waiting in the wings." --Michael Buerk
Book Description
The terrible 1984 famine in Ethiopia focused the world's attention on the country and the issue of aid as never before. Anyone over the age of 30 remembers something of the events - if not the original TV pictures, then Band Aid and Live Aid, Geldof and Bono. Peter Gill was the first journalist to reach the epicentre of the famine and one of the TV reporters who brought the tragedy to light. This book is the story of what happened to Ethiopia in the 25 years following Live Aid: the place,the people, the westerners who have tried to help, and the wider multinational aid business that has come into being. We saved countless lives in the beginning and continued to save them now, but have we done much else to transform the lives of Ethiopia's poor and set them on a 'development' course that will enable the country to do without us?
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Very Worthwhile Read,
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This review is from: Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia since Live Aid (Hardcover)
This book was easy to read, contained a wealth of information, and was well researched. I would definitely recommend it.
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3.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review) 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Food for thought -- but never enough of it,
By C. Lindsey - Published on Amazon.com
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This review is from: Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia since Live Aid (Hardcover)
An illuminating report from a beat reporter whose beat is Ethiopian famine. I benefited from Gill's knowledge of the peoples, politicians, and geography of Ethiopia, and his dogged attempts to be fair to almost all sides. I say "almost" because he offered neither wisdom nor fairness toward anything American, governmental or otherwise, and because he obviously had his pet charities (whose rivals had little or no room to respond). Moreover, what hooked me into buying this book was the chance of a follow-up on the whole global charity phenomenon that surged in the 1980s: what did it leave behind? Is it still active in Ethiopia? Can I look inside its 21st-century progeny? How did it change (or not) westerners' desire to help the hungry, how did it spawn compassion fatigue, did it eventually shake off charity dilettantism or is that plague still with us?Gill has a fine sense of irony, so it was disappointing to spot the places where he didn't employ it. As in his efforts to parse the Meles government and its progress toward feeding people, reforms and techniques and strategies and so on, without once confronting the question of whether this is a land that could EVER feed itself, and if not, what the clear-eyed response should be. Maybe a country that endlessly perfects its ways of collecting and channeling aid from better-fed countries is not actually solving its problem. What could Ethiopia do, anyway, to bear itself up in a globalized world? Should we make a fetish of these scrawny, unreliable, tiny farms and their inevitable seasonal failures, or does Ethiopia need an injection of something entirely different that could pull it into the world economy? Is Ethiopian subsistence -- spotty subsistence -- enough for us all to feel smug and happy about what we've helped bring about there? Wouldn't we want more for ourselves? Moreover, Gill gets contraception backward: it's not an investment used to cut down the number of hungry mouths (western reductionism) but a technique that people will adopt AFTER their livelihoods become more secure. That's been shown. Family planning is the cart, prosperity the horse. "Feed the World" still echoes in my head from that dreck 1980s ballad. "Feed Ethiopia's future, and thus its prosperity, and thus its people" is presumably not as much of a hook. Interesting to watch the news today. Famine is once more raging in these barren lands, and nothing at all has been solved. |
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