Mark Fried

David Adams Richards has long been a wizard at conjuring tragic scenarios that address topical social problems in all their gory complexity. He is unafraid of challenging the reader’s prejudices or slicing through any delusions we might have about what makes us tick. In Principles to Live By (2016), for example, he pairs the brutal vicissitudes of a foster care system run by self-righteous and self-interested bureaucrats with the immense tragedy of genocide in…

Western efforts to reduce poverty overseas have long been plagued by two very human tendencies: we yearn for simple solutions and we crave quick results. Celebrated economist Jeffrey Sachs played to these tendencies when he announced in 2005 he would end extreme poverty in isolated and desperately poor African communities within five years. Most development professionals shook their heads in…

In the spring of 2004, I had the chance a million 30-somethings would give their iPods for: I shook hands with Bono. For Oxfam, I had helped set up his trip to Ottawa to lobby Paul Martin. When he gripped my hand and the cameras clicked and whirred, the Irish singer wore the nervous grimace and wary body language one might expect in any…