The Beautiful Tree by James Tooley
Themes: Education, Developing World, India
Available as an e-book (PDF) and hardcover from the Cato Institute. The Cato page also has a video related to themes covered in the book.
A South Asian edition has been published by Penguin with a foreword by Nandan Nilekani.
Also see a book event on the book organized by the Cato Institute. The main theme of the book is private schools for the poor, and it is based on research conducted by the author in India (Hyderabad, Delhi, Goa), Africa, and China. Also, see an award-winning article by Tooley (PDF) that is essentially an adaptation of the final chapter of his book.
Reviews/mentions: Paying for schools on $2 a day by Laura Freschi on the Aid Watch blog, London Book Review.
For more on Tooley’s research, visit the website of the E. G. West Centre for Education, where Tooley works.
Related books: Market education by Andrew Coulson.

[...] be a panacea, and they may have negative effects. As James Tooley describes in his fascinating book A Beautiful Tree, private schools for the poor are already thriving in many poor areas and one of the reasons he [...]
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