????尼娜?芒克的新書《理想主義者：杰弗里?薩克斯和他對消除貧困的探索》明確了一件事：消除貧困并不是件容易的事。即使對薩克斯來說也是一樣，這位卓有名望而且不屈不撓的經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家2005年時曾在自己的著作《終結(jié)貧困》中聲稱這個問題可以得到解決。他表示，借助深思熟慮的規(guī)劃以及來自發(fā)達(dá)國家更多的一點幫助，我們甚至到2025年就能消除貧困。

????但薩克斯的探索——他在撒哈拉以南非洲地區(qū)的少數(shù)村莊進(jìn)行了實踐，即千禧村項目（MVP）——似乎處處碰壁。一處牲畜市場在開辦兩個月之后即遭到拋棄；村民把（旨在預(yù)防瘧疾的）新蚊帳用在了山羊身上；運水的驢子死掉了；醫(yī)院的發(fā)電機(jī)發(fā)生了故障；萬眾期待的香蕉粉和菠蘿市場永遠(yuǎn)未能成形；而且，由于那里沒有市場或本地存儲設(shè)施，當(dāng)?shù)氐挠衩纂m然借助化肥和高產(chǎn)種子獲得了大豐收，但最終卻喂了老鼠。

????在其它情況下，這些小失敗可以算作汲取經(jīng)驗教訓(xùn)；當(dāng)你在幾乎沒有得到開發(fā)的地方嘗試改善人們的生活，你要做好心理準(zhǔn)備，遭遇一系列挫折和錯綜復(fù)雜的問題。但薩克斯帶著數(shù)百萬美元來到非洲，擁有權(quán)貴人士的關(guān)系網(wǎng)，卻很少考慮在他之前援助社區(qū)所做的努力，所以，他的失敗給讀者留下的印象不僅僅是令人失望，而且是活該。

????芒克是《名利場》（Vanity Fair）雜志的特約編輯，以前還曾經(jīng)是《財富》的專欄作家，她將一個6個月的雜志報道任務(wù)擴(kuò)展為這個長達(dá)6年的書籍項目。芒克從未告訴讀者她自己對于薩克斯的真實看法，直到這本書的倒數(shù)第二段。她不必那樣做，她的報告生動地講述了一個狂妄自大的人的故事。薩克斯是一個具有吸引力的人物，他在之前取得過大膽的功績——例如，他在30多歲的時候說服玻利維亞、波蘭和俄羅斯的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人對他們國家的經(jīng)濟(jì)實施“休克療法”——但芒克明確寫道，盡管薩克斯擁有不凡的技能和智利，但他承諾在短短5年內(nèi)讓數(shù)十個非洲村莊脫離貧困這件事（他計劃在非洲大陸推廣這種模式）依然遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超出了他的能力所及。

????芒克是一位優(yōu)秀的作家，擁有鋪陳額外生動細(xì)節(jié)的能力，她成功讓可能很乏味的主題——對外援助的政治；烏干達(dá)馬托基（matoke，煮過的新鮮香蕉——譯注）市場的復(fù)雜細(xì)節(jié)；非政府組織在抗瘧疾工作上的明爭暗斗——形成一本十分生動、有時甚至顯得饒有趣味的書。

????One thing is made clear in Nina Munk's new book, The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty, it's that solving poverty isn't easy. Not even for Sachs, the celebrated and indefatigable economist who proclaimed it was eminently solvable in 2005, in his book "The End of Poverty." With thoughtful planning and just a little more help from the developed world, we could even do it by 2025, he argued.

????But Sachs's quest—which plays out in the handful of villages in sub-Saharan Africa that comprise his Millennium Villages Project (MVP)—seems to falter at every turn. A livestock market is abandoned two months after it opens. Villagers use their new mosquito nets (distributed to prevent malaria) on goats. Water-carrying donkeys drop dead. Hospital generators break down. Much-anticipated markets for banana flour and pineapple never materialize. And, because there is no market or local storage facilities, a bumper crop of maize—thanks to fertilizer and high-yield seeds—goes to the rats.

????In any other case, these small failings might be chalked up as lessons learned; expected setbacks and complications in trying to improve lives in hard and barely developed places. But for Sachs, who arrived in Africa with millions of dollars, a rolodex to the rich and powerful, and little regard for the efforts of the aid community that came before him, readers are left with the sense that these unimpressive results are more than disappointing. They're a deserved comeuppance.

????Munk, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and former Fortune writer, stretched a six-month magazine assignment into this six-year book project. She never tells readers exactly how she feels about Sachs until the second to last paragraph of the book. She doesn't have to. Her reporting yields a rich parable of one man's hubris. Sachs is a fascinating figure who has achieved audacious things before—like convincing leaders of Bolivia, Poland and Russia to administer "shock therapy" to their economies while in his thirties—but Munk makes clear his promise to pull a dozen African villages out of poverty in just five years (a model he plans to scale across the continent) is beyond even his considerable skill and intellect.

????A fine writer with a gift for deploying spare, vivid detail, Munk overcomes the burden of what could be duller-than-dirt subject matter—the politics of foreign aid; the ins and outs of Uganda's matoke market; NGO infighting over anti-malaria efforts—into a lively and at times, quite funny book.

????芒克的敘述將她在實地的所見所聞編織在一起——她主要觀察了兩座村莊——這些見聞通常是很多千禧村項目工作人員的辛勤努力，以及薩克斯高來高去的足跡，他會乘坐裝有空調(diào)的裝甲SUV在非洲巡游。這種并列對比的反差并不小，而薩克斯本人也是一樣。這本書記錄了一個場景，在薩克斯走下飛抵達(dá)累斯薩拉姆的航班時，他沖著一位乘客（一位寄生蟲專家）大喊大叫——“這些人的死亡是你一手造成的！”——因為后者反對他發(fā)起的免費發(fā)放蚊帳的活動。跟這個地區(qū)的其他援助工作者一樣，這位寄生蟲學(xué)家花了幾年時間發(fā)展起一門私人的蚊帳生意，他并不希望免費分發(fā)蚊帳毀了自己的努力。

????Her narrative weaves together scenes from the field—she focuses on two villages— usually chronicling the many travails of MVP staff, and scenes trailing the jet-set Sachs, who rides around Africa in armored, air-conditioned SUVs. The juxtaposition is not subtle but neither is Sachs, who, at one point in the book, while disembarking a flight in Dar es Salaam, shouts down a fellow passenger (a parasitologist)—"These deaths are on your hands!"— for opposing his campaign to distribute mosquito nets. The parasitologist, like other aid workers in the region, had spent recent years developing a private mosquito net industry and didn't want to undo the work by giving nets out for free.