The key question addressed in the book is: Why have so many
large-scale schemes to improve the human condition failed so badly? And
James Scott is the right person to have asked this question. Scott is
the Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Anthropology at Yale
University. He is also the author of The Moral Economy of the Peasant:
Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (1977), Weapons of the Weak:
Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1987), and Domination and the Arts
of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (1992). All of the above have given
him an excellent understanding of the nature of conflict in societies
and the means of survival for the poor. Often the protagonists in the
conflict have been people on one side and governments on the other. This
is essential background for the book under review.