Introduction

I have been thinking about this book, perhaps subconsciously, ever since I disembarked in Brazil about 40 years ago as a wide-eyed, naïve Peace Corps volunteer. Fresh out of college, I was assigned to work as a rural agricultural extension agent in one of the country’s poorest and most remote regions. This initial grass-roots immersion in the problems of underdevelopment was then followed by a career path that zigged and zagged after graduate school from a Wall Street investment bank to the International Finance Corporation at the World Bank, back to the private financial sector, including a stint at a private equity firm, and finally academia, where I have been privileged to teach graduate students what I had practiced for decades.