Weekly Reading List: Mosquito nets and fishermen, Papa's Letters, A Century of Immigration and Italy in Africa

Why trying to help poor countries might actually hurt them

This is a bit more of Moyo's "Dead Aid" redux...foreign aid comes in so many shapes and flavors it is quite difficult to quantify on a purely economic/quantitative basis. For example, you can't really quantify the economic effect of 15 million mosquito nets for example. On the other end of the spectrum sometimes those nets are used by fishermen instead...the best aspect that the author highlights is the difficult of quantifying aid since so many of the variables are micro (i.e., local) ones.

Ernest Hemingway as Ravenous Reader and Gossip

The third installment of an expected 17 volumes of Hemingway's letters.  Hemingway is one of my favorite writers (along with Salter and Markham) so this volume will automatically get added to my Amazon wish list.  Evidently Hemingway was not as stoic and guarded in his letters as he was in his fiction.

From Germany to Mexico: How America’s source of immigrants has changed over a century
A fascinating look at the poor tired huddled masses that have come to the US from around the world over the past 100 years.  Who knew that the largest immigrant population group in South Dakota is Ethiopia...and in PA is China.

Igiaba Scego’s novel ‘Adua’ intertwines Afro-Italy’s historic phases

For whatever reason I've been coming across a lot of Libya-Italy articles/literature.  Unfortunately, Scego's novel has yet to be translated into English.  BUT, I'm currently reading another Italian-Libyan author named Spina's newly-ish translated The Confines of the Shadow--a century long look at life and colonization in Italy.

In the meantime you can read one of Scega's translated short stories: Sausages