nOne of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.--John Gray, New York Times Book Review n Hailed as a magisterial critique of top-down social planning by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail--sometimes catastrophically--in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. n n Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.--New Yorker n n A tour de force.-- Charles Tilly, Columbia Universityn