IT'S NOT EASY to write about poverty, its causes and effects, in a winning way. But in his book, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, Jeffrey D. Sachs presents the issues with intelligence, conviction, and the rarest of all qualities when poverty is under discussion: hope. He is convinced that it is possible to meet the United Nations Millennium Goals of cutting poverty in half by 2015 and ending extreme poverty by 2025.

Roughly one-sixth of the world's population—about a billion people—live in extreme poverty; they live on the equivalent of one dollar or less per day. They are barely surviving, and, if nothing changes, these people have no future. Another 1.5 billion live just above subsistence level, on about two dollars per day. They are very poor, but can aspire to move beyond their current condition. Most of them will also need help to make that transition. Sachs is convinced that both groups can break out of the poverty trap.

The Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and Special Advisor to Kofi Annan on the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, Sachs was a fast-rising, tenured professor at Harvard University by the time he was 28. In 1983, Sachs felt "I knew just about everything that needed to be known about the subject" of the financial crises affecting developing countries. Then an invitation to attend a Harvard seminar on hyperinflation in Bolivia totally transformed his life. Disagreeing with a statement in the presentation, he stepped forward and told the participants the theoretical solution to the problem. One of the individuals in the room said, "Well, if you're so smart, why don't you come to La Paz and help us?"

That invitation, which was meant to be taken seriously, put Sachs on the road to developing what he calls "clinical economics." Like clinical medicine, it has a checklist for examining and diagnosing the patient, and Sachs spends a chapter explaining—perhaps a bit too exhaustively—the parallels between the two systems. In subsequent chapters he provides clear and fascinatingly told accounts of working not just with Bolivia's government over several years but also being part of Poland's shift to a free-market economy, as Lech Walesa and Solidarity emerged and took power.

Russia, first under Gorbachev and later under Yeltsin, was a much tougher task. Permanent progress still is elusive. Sachs writes eloquently of the challenges, noting, "Russians had lived under Stalin, seventy-five years of central planning, a thousand years of Russian autocracy, and centuries of serfdom ..." (p. 134). That statement captures in a nutshell both the need for a change in thought that will unite this very diverse nation and put its affairs on a more stable footing, and why that change is proving to be so difficult.

Sachs also writes of China, India, and Africa in ways that make clear the challenges, and yet burn bright with hope.

In some ways, the road ahead seems very straightforward: If the United States and other developed nations commit themselves, not just promising but actually giving poverty-stricken countries the funds or debt relief they need, freedom from poverty is possible. This will require a long-term commitment from the international community—possibly as much as 20 years—but Sachs isn't proposing permanent dependence on "handouts" from wealthier nations. He writes: "The beauty of ideas is that they can be used over and over again, without ever being depleted. ... This is why we can envision a world in which everybody achieves prosperity" (p. 41).

While eliminating poverty will have a cost not just financially but also in terms of the kind of partnering that will need to develop among the nations, both may seem small when one considers the relation of poverty and hopelessness to terrorism and its attendant costs. But there's an even greater benefit to be had. Sachs explains that a failure to invest in progress has a cost in terms of lost human aspiration, creativity, and innovation that could better the whole globe, including the nations who "invest" in the troubled areas. He also uncovers the roots of poverty—disease, poor nutrition, lack of education, denial of rights to women, war, ethnic rivalries, corruption in government.

No matter how overwhelming these and other problems may seem, however, he is convinced that the end of poverty is possible if nations will make the sacrifices and the commitment such change requires. One can only hope that all parties—rich and poor alike—will be willing to use what Mary Baker Eddy once described as "wisdom, economy, and brotherly love" (Church Manual, p. 77) in their transactions with each other and their people. That approach will surely open the door to progress and healing.