How did the world get like this? Eight books to help explain the way we live now

Inequality and poverty arose by design, not chance and stories of human rights abuses and failures in development have deep roots. Here, Prof Benjamin Selwyn recommends key non-fiction texts to help unravel some global complexities

One of the key questions in development is, can all countries become rich, and if so, how? Rostow, a US academic and adviser to JFK, rising to national security adviser to President Lyndon Johnson in the mid 1960s, said they can.