Apostles of Development recounts the work of six individuals, all former classmates at Cambridge University, who helped make international development - the effort to reduce poverty and inequality around the world - into a juggernaut of the second half of the twentieth century. 

The six Apostles in this book include some of South Asia's best-known names, like Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and long-serving Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as well as leading academics (Jagdish Bhagwati) and key policy-makers in both national and international circles: Pakistani Mahbub ul Haq, creator of the Human Development Index; Bangladeshi Rehman Sobhan, an activist for economic justice, and Sri Lankan Lal Jayawardena, founding director of a UN development think tank (WIDER). Taken together, this group both reflected and shaped the growing enterprise of international development from the time they left Cambridge in the mid-1950s well into the 2010s.

Based on newly available archival documents from 10 countries, and on interviews with four of the subjects, the widows of the other two, and almost 100 of their colleagues, friends, classmates, and rivals, this book combines riveting personal accounts with a sweeping history of one of the enduring human activities of the late 20th century and early 21st centuries: creating a more prosperous and equitable world.

[Event for members of ODID and the Department of Economics only]