How the West Was Lost Fifty Years of Economic Folly--and the Stark Choices Ahead

In How the West Was Lost, the New York Timesbestselling author Dambisa Moyo offers a bold account of the decline of the West's economic supremacy. She examines how the West's flawed financial decisions have resulted in an economic and geopolitical seesaw that is now poised to tip in favor of the emerging world, especially China. Amid the hype of China's rise, however, the most important story of our generation is being pushed aside: America is not just in economic decline, but on course to become the biggest welfare state in the history of the West. The real danger is a thome, Moyo claims. While some countries such as Germany and Sweden have deliberately engineered and financed welfare states, the United States risks turning itself into a bloated welfare state not because of ideology or a larger vision of economic justice, but out of economic desperation and short-sighted policymaking. How the West Was Lostreveals not only the economic myopia of the West but also the radical solutions that it needs to adopt in order to assert itself as a global economic power once again.

Dambisa Moyo is the author of Dead Aid. Born and raised in Lusaka, Zambia, Moyo completed a Ph.D. in economics at Oxford University and holds a master’s from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She worked for the World Bank as a consultant, and also worked at Goldman Sachs for eight years. In 2009, Time magazine named her one of the “100 most influential people in the world.” Her writing frequently appears in publications including the Financial Times, The Economist, and The Wall Street Journal.

“Moyo’s diagnosis of the recent disasters in financial markets is succinct and sophisticated...I applaud her brave alarum against our economic and social complacency: her core concerns are sufficiently close to painful truths to warrant our attention.”—Paul Collier, The Observer  “This argument...can rarely have been made more concisely...Moyo is a very serious lady indeed.”—Dominic Lawson, The Times

“The sad saga of the recession gives legs to Dambisa Moyo’s provocatively-entitled book, for it goes to the heart of the great economic issue of our times: how swiftly will power shift over this century?”— Hamish McRae, The Independent