Think that throwing money and resources at a problem is helpful?

Think again.

This book shows, in an uncompromising way, how people with the best of intentions to help others end up doing more harm than good. Specifically, Maren takes his first-hand experience, the anecdotes of others and the words and records of the organizations he criticizes, to show how international charity, aid organizations and the United Nations are less set up to help poor people than they are to further their own bureaucracies.

As an aid worker himself and later a correspondent, Maren examines 19 years of foreign aid in Kenya, Burkina, Faso, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Ethiopia and the U.S., to show how foreign aid did far from improving situations in these countries; instead, these organizations made things worse, far worse.

Aid organizations, Maren concludes, end up epitomizing ethnocentric colonialism at the expense of the poor people they allege to help. Maren’s unforgiving research paints a picture the commercials of Sally Struthers are incapable of and stridently resistant to telling. Humanitarian intervention, as Maren pens it, is a destructive force preying on the guilt of those who appear to be better off — middle class, American consumers.

As Maren convincingly shows, however, the road to hell is paved with the illusions of modern civilization. The overt victims are evident while the less-obvious victims remain naïve and in denial. With any luck, The Road to Hell will change that.

CLARIFICATION (9/8/08): This is not to say that charity is, in and of itself, a bad thing. My wife and I donate to certain ’causes’ (and volunteer our time and services), and I wholeheartedly recommend micro-lending as a form of direct-to-lender ‘aid.’ The process of lending as Kiva.org does it has an incentive — payback — as its success. It’s not a handout. I can’t recommend Kiva enough, assuming they don’t recruit Sally Struthers as a spokesperson anytime soon.