Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development

Thinking Small examines the United States' decades-long experiment with community development programs both domestically and internationally. Through detailed research and historical analysis, Immerwahr traces how this approach to fighting poverty became a dominant strategy in American policy from the 1930s through the 1970s. The book follows key figures and organizations that championed small-scale, local development initiatives across rural America, the Philippines, India, and Vietnam. Community development projects aimed to transform societies from the ground up through cooperative farming, village-level democracy, and grassroots organization. The narrative tracks how these programs evolved from the New Deal era through the Cold War period, revealing their implementation and outcomes across different cultural contexts. Immerwahr draws on extensive archival materials and primary sources to reconstruct the planning, execution, and assessment of these initiatives. This history raises fundamental questions about scale, modernization, and the limits of social engineering as tools for creating change. The tensions between top-down planning and bottom-up community action remain relevant to current debates about international development and poverty reduction.

Readers appreciate Immerwahr's thorough research and analysis of community development programs across multiple decades and countries. Many note his clear writing style makes complex policy histories accessible. Positive comments focus on: - Detailed case studies from Philippines, India, and Vietnam - Links between local development projects and larger Cold War politics - Clear explanations of how policy ideas evolved and spread Main criticisms: - Academic tone can be dry at times - Some sections become repetitive - Limited coverage of more recent community development efforts Review Sources: Goodreads: 3.9/5 (43 ratings) Amazon: 4.4/5 (8 ratings) Representative reader comment: "Documents the fascinating history of how small-scale development became a tool of American foreign policy - both its promises and limitations" - Goodreads reviewer The book attracts academic readers, development practitioners, and those interested in US foreign policy history.

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🔷 Author Daniel Immerwahr teaches at Northwestern University and has written extensively about American empire and global history, including the bestseller "How to Hide an Empire." 🔷 The book reveals how community development programs, despite their idealistic intentions, often served as tools of American foreign policy during the Cold War to counter communist influence. 🔷 The concept of "community development" gained prominence after Indian independence in 1947, when the country's rural development programs caught the attention of Western policymakers. 🔷 Many of the community development strategies first tested in countries like India and the Philippines were later reimagined and applied to poor urban communities in the United States during the War on Poverty. 🔷 The book won the Merle Curti Award in Intellectual History from the Organization of American Historians in 2015, recognizing it as an outstanding work in American intellectual history.