10 Books You Should Read If You Want to Have an Impact

Why Give a Damn:

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by hard problems, here is a list of resources to help you increase your understanding of the world and then take action.

The author of this post, Paul Polak, has brought 22+ million farmers out of poverty. His work is dedicated to designing products for the Other 90% (the 2.6 billion customers who live on less than $2/day).

Following is a list of the ten books that have been most helpful in increasing my understanding of the world.

1. Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, by E. F. Schumacher (Blond & Briggs, 1973)
2. The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, by William Easterly (Penguin Press, 2006)
3. Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962, by Frank Dikotter (Walker & Company, 2011)
4. Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948, by Madeleine Albright (Harper, 2012)
5. Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way, by Jon Krakauer (Anchor, 2011)
6. Hell’s Cartel: IG Farben and the Making of Hitler’s War Machine, by Diarmuid Jeffreys (Metropolitan Books, 2008)
7. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, by Jung Chang (Simon & Schuster, 1991)
8. Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (Knopf, 2005)
9. Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II, by Arthur Herman (Random House, 2012)
10. The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits, by C.K. Prahalad (Wharton School Publishing, 2004)

What are some books that have had an impact on your understanding of the world?