Road to Hell

Mr. Maren's mission, which he accomplishes beyond a doubt, is to force us to think about humanitarian intervention in uncomfortable ways. Maren and his conclusions will have to be heard whenever the issue [of aid] is aired, lest more money be wasted and fewer people actually helped.

— Raymond Bonner The New York Times Book Review

Reading The Road to Hell, I kept thinking of the novels of Joseph Conrad. Lively, hard-hitting and written with keen scorn; it deserves to be widely read.

--Montreal Gazette

Imagine a blend of the old-style American muck-raking populism of H.L. Mencken or I.F. Stone and Evelyn Waugh's eye for absurdity. . . for an idea of what to expect in this well-written, ticking time bomb of a book.

-- Vancouver Sun

Maren writes with the fury and disillusionment of intimacy. . . an invaluable corrective to the hagiographical accounts of humanitarian aid operations that have been the norm. . . He is an expert debunker.

-- David Rieff in Foreign Affairs

A devastating portrayal of aid agencies drunk on government largesse and indifferent to actual needs and to the impact of their assistance.

-- London Review of Books.

A chilling exposé... a rare insider's view of the effects of international-relief efforts. A compelling indictment of good intentions gone awry, solidly documented.

-- Cleveland Plain Dealer

Maren is a dogged, tenacious researcher -- The Road to Hell is a first-rate exposé.

--The American Enterprise

Maren's work is a superb and detailed account of something terribly wrong. Ultimately, the "global fixit industry" fixes little but itself.

-- The National Catholic Reporter

Marvellous. Maren shows how aid is the modern form of colonialism, a 'humanitarian' cover for maintaining imperialist domination.

-- Socialist Review

This book is a forceful and disturbing portrait of Western intervention in Somalia.

-- Publisher's Weekly

Engaging. . .provocative.. . will require some kind of response by those wishing to refute the broader argument against foreign aid.

-- The Washington Times

Tenaciously and passionately researched... Maren hurls stinging accusations and makes them stick. Much of what Maren uncovers is shocking, some of it surreal.

— Kirkus

Eloquent and forceful...crisply written. -- The New Democrat

Reads like a morality play - how Lady Bountiful turned Hydra -- The Baltimore Sun

A splendid, literate,muckraking memoir -- Amazon