Economy of Words is such a book. The weight of the evidence is truly overwhelming, and the breadth of the ethnography, both in the range of central banks the author has accessed and the range of materials and informantsâfrom academic theories to policy makers to lower level data collectors to economists to the history of economic thoughtâis breathtaking.
On February 16th 1969, Build Me Up Buttercup by the Foundations peaked at #3 (for 3 weeks) on Billboard's Hot Top 100 chart; it had entered the chart on December 29th, 1968 at position #84 and spent 15 weeks on the Top 100 (and for 8 of those 15 weeks it was on the Top 10)...
Other nation-building efforts, however, have a checkered history--with some successes and many failures. Two recent reports have examined previous U.S. nation-building efforts in hopes of shedding light on what can be accomplished in Iraq. One is a book titled America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq. It was published in 2003 by the Rand Corporation, a highly respected U.S. think tank.