A volume in the Time-Life series, Library of Nations, this one gives a clear account of the massive challenges facing the country, and also the fairly uninformed and adventurist manner that decisions have been take in the past, resulting in a nation with great disparities in standards of living and wealth and income endowments. The irony is that this nation, like many others in the region, is liberally endowed with natural resources, including a huge tropical forest greater than the size of India, but short-term thinking has converted vast stretches into afid scrubland. This is rather evocative to this reader, as the book refers to the collapse of monoculture crops, such as eucalyptus under the "Jari" pulpwood project, which used to be held up as a model to us as young entrants into the forest service in India. This contrasts starkly with countries like, say, Singapore or Japan, which have built modern economies with few native raw material resources. These volumes in the Library of Nations series, in fact, provides a good reference for anyone wishing to understand why some countries flourish and others don't. ( )