Collected here are fifteen essays about the severe poverty that today afflicts billions of human lives. The essays seek to explain why freedom from poverty is a

Some 2.5 billion human beings live in severe poverty, deprived of such essentials as adequate nutrition, safe drinking water, basic sanitation, adequate shelter

The secretary general of Amnesty International puts forth a powerful argument that poverty is not just an economic problem but a global human-rights violation.

By the winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Economics, an essential and paradigm-altering framework for understanding economic development--for both rich and poor-