The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster

September 8, 2013

When the ground beneath your feet is gone, it's time to take stock of the world around you. AP reporter Jonathan Katz goes from surviving Haiti's devastating 2010 earthquake to describing how grandiose aid pronouncements of billion-dollar proportions have built little more than castles in clouds. It's not what we in the donor-world want to hear about the international relief and recovery funding for Haiti, but it is what we need to know about how it all works, or doesn't, as is more case.

The Big Truck is not a big lecture, it's just what Katz observed about people in crises and promises without the backing of accountability. In trying to piece together why desperately needed reconstruction didn't get off Haiti's badly broken ground and pledges of epic amounts haven't come true, Katz has written a bold, myth-buster of a book that shows how the worst kind of aftershocks may well be all of our own doing, and all in the name of aid.

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