I spent much of yesterday reading Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, and will be reviewing it here tomorrow. It has been well received by other reviewers, and in many cases reviewed alongside Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel's More Than Good Intentions. I reviewed that recently here. The Financial Times (registration/paywall), The Economist and Bill Easterly in the Wall Street Journal covered them both together. Forbes also has a review of Poor Economics,  while David Leonhardt discusses More Than Good Intentions with the authors on the New York Times Economix blog. Pretty much all the reviews have welcomed these two takes on the new development economics, along with the recent Getting Better by Charles Kenny. There is certainly a strong sense of focus on small-scale pragmatism, and corresponding impatience with Big Ideas in development, which is very welcome.

Other reviews of interest. Anatol Lieven's book Pakistan: A Hard Country features in The Guardian and  The Observer. The FT has a review of Francis Fukuyama's latest, the Origins of Political Order. The Guardian covers the new James Gleick, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood. The Economist has reviews of Roddy Boyd's book about the collapse of AIG, Fatal Risk, and Paul Allen's memoir Idea Man, which it describes as “permeated by a bitterness towards Bill Gates.”

Will Self reviews Aerotropolis (disapprovingly albeit seriously) in the London Review of Books – I reviewed it (approvingly) here – noting that readers would either love or hate its thesis.

Over at the New York Review of Books, Amartya Sen has an essay comparing the quality of life in China and India. He asks what each is doing with their rapidly increasing per capita GDP, commenting on the absence of political freedom in China and the intolerable inequality in India, concluding that growth matters but is not enough. The New York Times Sunday books section reviews William Cohan's book about Goldman Sachs, Money and Power.

All in all, there's a lot around to read. The in-pile is growing totteringly large again.