Gilbert Rist is professor emeritus at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. He previously taught in Tunisia, and spent several years as director of the Centre Europe-Tiers Monde. His other publications include The Delusions of Economics (Zed 2011). The History of Development was his first book to be translated into English, and has also been published in Spanish and Italian.

Compelling and exciting reading ... Rist's book, written with deliciously mild irony, is an account of the most crucial moments in which the rites of a belief embraced by millions were elaborated and canonized.

• Preface to the Fourth EditionPreface to the Third EditionPreface to the Second EditionIntroduction1. Definitions of Development2. Metamorphoses of a Western Myth3. The Making of a World System4. The Invention of Development5. The International Doctrine and Institutions Take Root6. Modernization Poised between History and Prophecy7. The Periphery and the Understanding of History8. Self-reliance: The Communal Past as a Model for the Future9. The Triumph of Third-Worldism10. The Environment, or the New Nature of 'Development'11. A Mixture of Realism and Fine Sentiments12. Globalization as a Simulacrum of 'Development'13. From the Struggle against Poverty to the Millennium Development Goals14. The Great Turnaround?15. Beyond 'Development': From Downscaling to a Change in the Economic ParadigmConclusionBibliographyIndex