This is an important and original contribution to growth and development that suggests how to integrate complex parts of the development process. It is a major contribution.
Douglass North, Nobel Laureate in Economic Science, Washington University in St. Louis
If you want to understand how politics, institutions, and policy interact with each other to produce economic success or ... Read morefailure - not over the very long run when we are all dead, but in the shorter run that affects us all - there are few books that pack as much insight as this one. Brian Levy is a practitioner who can theorize as well as any scholar. But the real value added of this book is the practical and pragmatic approach it brings to institutional reform. Dani Rodrik, Albert Hirschman Professor of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton Brian Levy draws on a wealth of experience as a practitioner to provide us with a practical agenda for helping improve the governance of poor countries. His book will be required reading for everyone concerned with the institutional foundations of development. Francis Fukuyama, Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow, Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Stanford University I finally got to reading Brian Levy's Working With the Grain. It is easily the most underestimated development book of 2014, and should be read alongside William Easterly's Tyranny of Experts (which it both complements and pushes back against).
Ken Opalo, PhD Candidate, Stanford University
Working with the Grain is about getting from the here to there of better governance in developing countries. Building on insights from recent scholarship and practice, this important book eschews recipes in a serious and thought-provoking analysis of how to approach reform initiatives in distinct contexts.
Merilee S. Grindle, Professor of International Development, Kennedy School of Government, and Director, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University
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