The book stresses the importance of good governance, education, secure property rights and sound economic policies in making progress towards higher HDI values. If progress is to be made, all four factors, ¿basic pillars of development¿, should be promoted simultaneously. The book also discusses a set of long durée factors and auxiliary development factors. They form the ¿platform¿, from which the basic pillars may be managed. The long durée factors are: geography & environment & climate. The auxiliary factors are: culture & religion, colonialism; peace keeping & security; health, international aid, communication and globalization. The main body of this book consists of case studies of Zambia, Thailand, Chile and Finland. The study reveals that the status of the various development factors clearly improves moving from Zambia, through Thailand, to Chile and Finland. Scatter plot diagrams illustrate strong correlation between the factors studied and HDI score values in case-study countries compared with as many as 177 countries. Keywords: Development, HDI, governance, education, property rights, economy.