Writing off the rural West Book

I would say that this book is much-needed. It is heavy on quantitative methods, and so it does require attention, but it is well-written and generally easy to understand. Milanovic clarifies the debate over trends in global (and international) inequality by distinguishing between three approaches to analyzing inequality. This is really useful and allows for a much richer picture of trends in inequality, instead of just whether it's increasing or decreasing, which are both oversimplifications. Ultimately, a truly global analysis of inequality does improve upon population-weighted international inequality, but I will be interested to see how trends progress in more recent data.