This book makes for unpleasant reading. It deals with facts which most of us would prefer not to know; it raises questions which shatter our complacency; it deals with problems which we have long hoped vainly would simply go away. Its subject is the hunger, illness, poverty and wretchedness which is the plight of three-quarters of humanity today. In this study, Father Lebret, the well-known Dominican economist, argues that the West, although still living on the spiritual legacy of Christianity, has failed to rise above the level of enlightened self-interest in its dealings with the have-nor nations. It has, in effect, fallen into its own type,of Marxism, allowing economics to shape the future of the world.