Hernando de Soto’s ideas cannot and should not be ignored. This book will open many eyes to the nature of capital. The author
suggests a radically simple yet enormously challenging way of bringing the world’s impoverished billions onto the track of capitalism and
development: give them legal property rights to what they "own." The author’s intriguing case is that a lack of property rights - not a lack of entrepreneurial zeal or competence - stymies development in the former East Bloc and Third World countries. This seemed to be a
shockingly original notion when the author first propounded it in his bestseller The Other Patch , and it still does. If the book has a flaw, getAbstract.com warns, it is that the author’s undisguised missionary ardor sometimes makes one wonder whether he is merely a zealot. Even if he were one, the book would merit reading.