STEVE COLL: I suggest
The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS, by Helen Epstein. My premise is that the new president is a serious reader, is passionate about the big issues of his presidency, and hungers for reliable explication and detail, yet has limited time and therefore needs a single volume that is both easy to read and transformational in its effects. This at least was my experience as an accidental reader of
The Invisible Cure. Epstein is a molecular biologist who has worked extensively in Africa--her tough, fair-minded, empathetic, and empirical book changed utterly what I understood about the "social ecology" of the greatest medical crisis of our era and the policies that might address it. She is as hard on the United States as she is on African governments, and by this method has produced a great service to both. President Bush’s heartfelt but flawed approach to the AIDS crisis in Africa is one of his few truly positive legacies; if President Obama finds time for this book, he will not dare abandon Bush’s cause, but he will be smarter about its pursuit.
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