Junot Diaz recommends Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World by Mike Davis (Verso Books, $27)
Anybody who wants to understand where this huge material divide between the first and third worlds came from should begin with the El Nino famines and the white colonial powers that used them as a pretext to extend their powers, condemning millions to death and many more millions to absolute poverty. This book is really important for people of color, for people interested in issues of inequity, or just those who are interested in looking at the world. There are important explanations for why things got this way, and they're not really pretty. And yo, this guy can write his ass off.
Junot Diaz is the author of the short story collection Drown. Riverhead will publish his first novel next year.
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