Three books that will change your life

Recently I have read three most interesting, provoking and troubling books. These are three of the best reads I have had in recent years.
Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty
by Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman. The authors track the production, storage
and distribution of the basic foods that feed the world. There are many factors incluing what the writers term as new variant famine. In famines caused by drought, pestilence, bad agricultural policy or conflicts, the crops died first.  in new variant famine or AIDS -induced famine, the farmers, the crop growers died first, crops then died and then the recepient populations died.
Deeply troubling is the consideration of how Amercian farm policies (subsidization) and food aid policies had on the fledgling farming efforts of African nations. We as a nation forget our recent history of just 50 years ago when grain futures did not exist and so in times of plenty famrers literally dumped their grain, flooding the market, receiving marginal funds--leading to fewer resources for the next year and no reserve for years of famine or pestilence. American farmers receive hundreds of billions of dollars not to grow certain produce or to prop up global prices.  More troubling is the American food aid policy which requires that only American grown grain be shipped to famine regions. Additionally it must be shipped on American ships. So, for example, in Ethiopia, hundreds of grain trucks rumbled through Etheiopian towns with 200 pound sacks of U.S. grain (marked with the stars and the strips). These trucks RUMBLED PAST WAREHOUSES FULL OF ETHIOPIAN GRAIN, beans. Why? because the food aid policy said the food must come from the U.S. and the Ethiopian farmers possesd only donkeys for distribution and could not afford to give away their grain.
 
This is a must read book. You don't have to agree with the book, just contemplate its findings.
The Fever: How Malaria Ruled the World for 500,000 years.
This is an extraordinarily well written book, captivating from start to finish and very thought provoking as to the role of malaria in shaping global politics and policies. this includes impact in World War II and American slavery. Prepare for some cynicism as author Sonia Shah makes some claims that stretch credulity. Even these do not reduce the great research and proposing new ways of looking at matters gasp fo
r our attention.
Portolios of the Poor: How the Worlds' Poorest Poor Live on Two Dollars a Day
The world might suspect that the poorest of the poor have little if few funds to invest, save and so the assumption is that their money management skills are limited. What a remarkable study this is on othe rrealities and how to maximize limited transactions. this one will take a bit more work to get through but is well worth it. It grants dignity even admiration for their doing much with little.