Library Guides: Global Development: Background

Background Country Information

CIA World Factbook. Basic facts and history if you are just starting out.

Britannica Online. Same as above except more extensive. Useful for background but not a scholarly resource.

Cambridge Histories Online. Searchable text of the Cambridge Histories series. The regional history section has large multi-volume books on regions as well as large and populous countries.

Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Viewpoint. Reports, analysis, data and forecasts covering economics and politics for more than 200 countries.

Countries of the World and their Leaders. From Gale Reference.

Human Development Report Library Includes the UNDP flagship publication the Human Development Report, as well as national human development reports from over 250 countries and regions.

Library of Congress Country Studies. Description and analysis of the historical setting and the social, economic, political, and national security systems and institutions of countries throughout the world.

Oxford Scholarship Online. Ebook portal with scholarly books on many topics including economic history. Good for overviews.

Oxford Handbooks Online. Scholarly online historical encyclopedias and dictionaries.

Very Short Introductions. From Oxford University Press. Great short intros for all kinds of academic subjects.

World Development Report Library. Collection of the World Bank's flagship publication on economic development going back to 1978.

Sample Development Reference Books

De Gruyter Handbook of Degrowth
The handbook approaches degrowth as a loosely knit and developing set of interdisciplinary propositions about what it might take to achieve a world of human and non-human flourishing. Contributors explore, challenge, and critique degrowth's propositions and its prospects of shaping scholarly agendas, policy frameworks, and social movements.
Globalization and the Poor Periphery Before 1950
In Globalization and the Poor Periphery before 1950 Jeffrey Williamson examines globalization through the lens of both the economist and the historian, analyzing its economic impact on industrially lagging poor countries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The Political Economy of Southeast Asia: Politics and Uneven Development under Hyperglobalisation
"The Political Economy of Southeast Asia has become a leading reference for students of the region. With its breadth of geographic scope, timely themes, clarity of prose and rigor of analysis, Carroll, Hameiri and Jones have ensured that with this fourth edition the volume will continue its landmark status”
Development in Latin America: Critical Discussions from the Periphery
This edited volume discusses the development theory advanced by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in the 1940s, and its transformations through the second half of the twentieth century.

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Global Development: Background

Background Country Information

Sample Development Reference Books