I was attempting, in vain, to finish my Christmas shopping tonight and ended up purchasing (for myself) Fixing Failed States by Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart. I just finished chapter 2 and have to say that, so far, it is a whole lot of "no kidding" and "so what" stuff. It reads like a monograph from a think tank (which, I guess makes sense since the authors are co-founders of a think tank). Hopefully it gets better. The review on amazon is glowing, to say the least, so I am hoping that tomorrow's reading is a little more enthralling.