Poverty

It's probably because of my personality, but I like books that provide clear step by step instructions on what they are about.
With "The End of Poverty", Jeffery Sachs does this, providing an operations guide for countries to achieve the Millennium Development Goals agreed upon in 2000.

What was interesting was understanding some of the causes of poverty, and getting rid of some of the myths, especially of African nations. Some causes, such as corruption and mismanagement, affect a countries state a lot less than I had previously thought, which geography, disease and nutrition causes countries to get stuck in the poverty trap.

What was also interesting was that birth rates for poverty countries are high most likely because parents understand that they will lose some of their children and in order to compensate have many more kids. This in turn leads to population growth that the country and land cannot support adequately. If mortality rates of children goes down, then there is less risk of losing their children and parents will naturally reduce their family size (similar to richer countries).

I read an article once about how the human mind has difficulty comprehending large numbers. When you see a statistic 1 million children die from malaria each year, it's sometimes harder to imagine that than the 4000 that died in the World Trade Centre. 1 million is a staggering number from a preventable disease, but these people are nameless, faceless. Say what you will about Bill Gates, he can comprehend that large number, and recognises that significant amounts of money needs to be invested to combat that disease.

Here's to hoping we reach those Millennium Goals by 2015. Given the financial crisis, it's going to be a tough ask.