Vanity Fair journalist Nina Munk is this week’s guest on a very good EconTalk podcast with Russ Roberts. Munk wrote a 2007 article, “Jeffrey Sachs’ $200 Billion Dream,” which looked at the passion and plans of the End of Poverty author. She then decided to follow Sachs’ work in a long-term way, and things got complicated.

If Munk didn’t exactly come to praise the economist, she didn’t think she would end up burying him–but that’s pretty much what happened. Her resulting book on the topic, The Idealist, is a story of good intentions run aground as it pertains to the Sachsian method of sustainable development in impoverished African communities. Munk acknowledges the Millennium Villages Project isn’t an abject failure as a charity, but believes it isn’t a success in its stated aspiration to find a poverty-fighting formula. Munk doesn’t seem to be attempting to demonize anyone (although she does accuse Sachs of “emotional blackmail”) but is trying to make sense of the naivete and folly and mistakes.

I like Roberts, though I find self-serving his suggestion that idealists who try and fail are crueler than Libertarians who oppose activism. 

Listen here and read a Vanity Fair Q&A about the book here. See some excerpts from Sachs’ recent Ask Me Anything at Reddit.