In the award-winning The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier reveals that fifty failed states--home to the poorest one billion people on Earth--pose the central challenge of the developing world. The book shines much-needed light on this group of small nations that are dropping further and further behind the majority of the world's people. What the bottom billion need, Collier argues, is a bold new plan supported by the Group of Eight industrialized nations. The G8 will have to adopt preferential trade policies, new laws against corruption, new international charters, and even conduct carefully calibrated military interventions.