(Interim) book review: What Works in Development

I am almost finished reading What Works in Development; it is not light reading, but quite interesting and worthwhile. The format with two commentaries on each essay made each discussion much richer. So far I have particularly enjoyed two chapters.

Chapter 2, The New Development Economics: We Shall Experiment, But How Shall We Learn? (Dani Rodrik)

Chapter 6, The Other Invisible Hand: High Bandwidth Development Policy (Ricardo Hausmann)

Update: Chapter 7, Big Answers for Big Questions: The Presumption of Growth Policy (Abhijit Banerjee) is also worth a synopsis. Overall I found the volume quite good - Todd Moss's African Development remains my favorite synthesis of the history, issues and actors in development, but this gets the reader much closer to the leading minds in and cutting edge of development research (and the "civil war" allegedly engulfing them).