Witty economists are about as easy to find as anorexic mezzo-sopranos, natty mujahedeen, and cheerful Philadelphians. But Steven E. Landsburg...is one economist who fits the bill. In a wide-ranging, easily digested, unbelievably contrarian survey of everything from why popcorn at movie houses costs so much to why recycling may actually reduce the number of trees on the planet, the University of Rochester professor valiantly turns the discussion of vexing economic questions into an activity that ordinary people might enjoy.

-- Joe Queenan, "The Wall Street Journal"

"The Armchair Economist" is a wonderful little book, written by someone for whom English is a first (and beloved) language, and it contains not a single graph or equation...Landsburg presents fascinating concepts in a form easily accessible to noneconomists.

-- Erik M. Jensen, "The Cleveland Plain Dealer"

...enormous fun from its opening page...Landsburg has done something extraordinary: He has expounded basic economic principles with wit and verve.

-- Dan Seligman, "Fortune"

This original edited collection explores the value of public engagement in a wider social science context. Its main themes range from the dialogic character of social science to the pragmatic responses to the managerial policies underpinning the restructuring of Higher Education. The book is organised in three parts: the first encourages the reader to reflect upon the different social and political inflections of public engagement and offers one university example of a social science cafe in Bristol. The following sections are based upon talks given in the cafe and are linked by a concern with public engagement and the contribution of social science to a reflexive understanding of the dilemmas and practices of daily life. This highly topical book will be of interest to academics, practitioners and students interested in critical social issues as they impact on their everyday lives.

Written by scholars from both inside and outside China, this wide-ranging collection of essays explores the complexity of the relationship between governance and civil society by combining theoretical exploration and empirical case studies based on the governance practice in China.

This edited volume offers a clear in-depth overview of research covering a variety of issues in social search and recommendation systems. Within the broader context of social network analysis it focuses on important and up-coming topics such as real-time event data collection, frequent-sharing pattern mining, improvement of computer-mediated communication, social tagging information, search system personalization, new detection mechanisms for the identification of online user groups, and many more. The twelve contributed chapters are extended versions of conference papers as well as completely new invited chapters in the field of social search and recommendation systems. This first-of-its kind survey of current methods will be of interest to researchers from both academia and industry working in the field of social networks.

Why do some people stand on their beliefs year after year, while others flounder? What does the courage of conviction entail? By Love Convicted offers provocative ways to sustain commitment in the midst of a world filled with confusion and falsehood. In his fourth book, the author/psychologist unfolds the spiritual nature and dimensions of conviction. Using biblical principles, Dr. Cosenza presents four keys to conviction that enable us to accept grace in our lives and remain steadfast in our ability to love. Through a deeper understanding of God's love, we discover the remarkable ways He has enabled us to commit to spiritual truths concerning Christ. This book has implications for an understanding the spiritual nature of addictions. Those who yearn for the passion of conviction and seek to grow to greater spiritual heights of love will find this book compelling and enlightening.

The United States imprisons more than two million men and women in federal prisons and city, county, and state jails. More than 150,000 individuals are incarcerated in each of the states of California and Texas. Calling attention to the flaws in the justice system, The Mysterious Story of Gitano Cervantes tells the stories of five men housed in Swest state units. Author Finbar Manghan, who has served as a volunteer chaplain in the prisons, looks at the cases of the five men who have been prison residents for a combined period of seventy years. Two are white, two are black, and one is Hispanic. Three of them claim to be innocent, while two admit their guilt; the sentences of the latter are such that they will almost certainly die in prison. One is innocent beyond any reasonable doubt. The experiences of all of them have been tragic. The Mysterious Story of Gitano Cervantes addresses a host of issues related to the men's stories, including false imprisonment, medical mistreatment, misrepresentation of self due to life's humiliations, mental harassment, medical bungling, and betrayal. Manghan reviews the court and prison experiences of these men and explores the need for reform throughout the criminal justice system in America.

Leading sociologists outline the historical development of the discipline in Britain and document its continuing influence in this essential and comprehensive reference work. Spanning the Scottish enlightenment of the 18th century to the present day this handbook maps the discipline and the British contribution.

Image Warfare in the War on Terror provides an innovative re-examination of the war on terror. It argues that since 11 September 2001 image warfare has replaced techno-war as the dominant warfighting model. Roger suggests that it is a form of warfare in which Al Qaeda currently dominates while the West is still playing catch-up. By dealing frankly with the deployment of disturbing images generated by the 9/11 attacks - from bin Laden videos, suicide terrorism and hostage executions to prisoner abuses, Roger provides us with a new vocabulary through which these acts can be discussed and understood.

This book offers the first comprehensive assessment, from an International Relations perspective, of image warfare. Through engagement with IR, Media Studies and Visual Culture literatures, Roger introduces three new conceptual terms 'image munitions', 'counter-image munitions' and 'remediation battles'. These terms are then explored in chapters about political communications concerning Bush, Blair and bin Laden; suicides; executions and abuses.

This book critically examines coordination work between police officers and agencies. Police work requires constant interaction between police forces and units within those forces, yet the process by which police work with one another is not well understood by sociologists or practitioners. At the same time, the increasing inter-dependence between police forces raises a wide set of questions about how police should act and how they can be held accountable when locally-based police officers work in or with multiple jurisdictions. This rearrangement of resources creates important issues of governance, which this book addresses through an inductive account of policing in practice. Policing Integration builds on extensive fieldwork in a multi-jurisdictional environment in Canada alongside a detailed review of ongoing research and debates. In doing so, this book presents important theoretical principles and empirical evidence on how and why police choose to work across boundaries or create barriers between one another.

Ageing, meaning and social structure is a unique book advancing critical discourse in gerontology and makes a major contribution to understanding key social and ethical dilemmas facing ageing societies. It confronts and integrates approaches that have been relatively isolated from each other, and interrelates two major streams of thought within critical gerontology: analyses of structural issues in the context of political economy and humanistic perspectives on issues of existential meaning. The chapters, from a wide range of contributors, focus on major issues in ageing such as autonomy, agency, frailty, lifestyle, social isolation, dementia and professional challenges in social work and participatory research. This volume should be valuable reading for scholars and graduate students in gerontology and humanistic studies, as well as for policy makers and practitioners working in the field of ageing.

This book explores in what ways both sides involved in the so-called war on terror are using schoolchildren as propaganda tools while putting the children's security at grave risk. The book explores how terrorists use attacks on education to attempt to destabilize the government while the government and the international aid community use increases in school attendance as an ostensible index of largely illusory progress in the overall security situation and in development. The book challenges the notion that unoccupied civilian schools are not entitled under the law of armed conflict to a high standard of protection which prohibits their use for military purposes. Also examined are the potential violations of international law that can occur when government and education aid workers encourage and facilitate school attendance, as they do, in areas within conflict-affected states such as Afghanistan where security for education is inadequate and the risk of terror attacks on education high.

This book is a key resource on the foundations of Marxist Internet and Digital Media Studies. It presents 16 contributions that show how Marx's analyses of capitalism, the commodity, class, labour, work, exploitation, surplus-value, dialectics, crises, ideology, class struggles, and communism help us to understand the Internet and social media in 21st century digital capitalism.

Originally published between 1968 and 1989, the volumes in this set: Present a coherent body of information on the inter-relation between nutrition, health and disease in its social context. Examine various aspects of disease ecology relating socio-geographical contrasts to a dichotomy between infectious and non-infectious diseases. Investigate certain large-scale demographic phenomena in India - among others the experience of bubonic plague, influenza, cholera and famine. Discuss how social and psychological factors influence the treatment process. Explain why so many people suffer behavioural changes in later life; how this affects those around them and the challenges of providing health services for ageing populations. Provide historical perspective on contemporary difficulties and invite debate about the future development of health services. Offer international comparisons, particularly between the UK and US health care systems. Explore how the NHS confronts perennial stresses and problems, in particular the allocation of scarce resources. Investigate policy and legislation in the area of the provision of medicines. Chart the dramatic changes in the US mental health system during the 20th Century.

This study examines representations of the cityscape and of a so-called "new urban violence" in both detective-centered and detectiveless crime fiction produced in Spanish America and Spain during recent decades. It documents the emergence and permutations of this production as an index not only of local perceptions of contemporary urban experience and of a contemporary urban "ecology of fear," but also as a transnational index of the globalization of literary forms and markets. It centers on the inscription of urban space in novels set in the metropolitan centers of the Hispanic World: Mexico City, Bogota, Buenos Aires, and Barcelona.

This book discusses sustainable forest management from the perspectives of sociology, anthropology, politics, economics and policy. It examines the roles of governments, private sectors, NGOs, academics and local communities in implementing sustainable plantation forestry, which aims to supply timber for the forestry industry while at the same time reducing global warming. The book also explores the debates on sustainable forest management practices in several countries, and examines the effects of political ecology on plantation forestry as well as the impact of climate change and conservation programs. By analyzing a number of interrelated issues, it offers a valuable resource for all governments, private companies, practitioners, NGOs, academics and students studying forest management and political ecology from a social sciences perspective.

In "Women: Theory and Practice," Bernard Chapin challenges the accepted theories of feminism and sexual equality in this thought-provoking, revolutionary look at the battle of the sexes in the twenty-first century. This book captures the true essence of today's apocryphal gap between men and women and how it affects not only the workplace, but also romantic relationships and the interactions of men and women everywhere.

Chapin introduces a truly contrarian argument against society's current atmosphere of political correctness. He also makes a convincing case for the hidden damage caused by the women's movement and the popular mindset that women are no longer just the fairer sex, they are the "better" sex.

Chapin questions the rationale behind policies and laws created to protect women's rights and to construct equality in the workplace. Chapin describes society's current backlash against men and how it has created a culture that has wrongly declared women to be intellectually, morally, and emotionally superior.

"Women: Theory and Practice" provides a clear, rational argument against a popular socio-political atmosphere that has turned women into demi-gods, and men into second class citizens.

Financial sustainability is one of the key challenges confronting Europe's universities today. Despite the fact that universities are at the centre of knowledge creation and development, which itself is seen as one of the main engines of economic growth, public funding of higher education in most countries is not increasing or at least not increasing enough in real terms. "Democratisation of higher education" has led to the fact that the higher education budgets per student are relatively low in most European countries compared to Europe's competitors. Despite declarations of intent to increase spending on higher education and research, it is not very likely that public expenditure will grow significantly on average in Europe and therefore be able to keep up with rapidly inflating costs in the years to come. One of the reasons for this is that higher education and research have to compete with other priorities in public budgets (e.g., security, health, etc.). Furthermore, the recent economic downturn has contributed to the decision in many European countries to decrease the levels of investment in higher education and research. Such trends are particularly worrisome for universities across Europe, whose continuing dependence on public funding puts their future sustainability under pressure. New funding schemes and incentives have been discussed and introduced in many European higher education systems, including competitive funding schemes for research under the name of "excellence" policies. Despite the different national institutional configurations in Europe, higher education systems face similar demands of promoting sustainable funding models, maintaining high academic standards, and equality. Thus, financial sustainability is not an end in itself; it aims to ensure that the public university's goals are reached by guaranteeing that the institution produces sufficient income to enable it to invest in high quality education and produce equitable outcomes. For these reasons, this book analyses funding reforms from a multidimensional approach.

Urban renewal has been the dominant approach to revitalizing industrialized communities that fall into decline. A national, community-based organization, the Skillman Foundation sought to engage in a joint effort with the University of Michigan's School of Social Work to bring six neighborhoods in one such declining urban center, Detroit, back to positions of strength and national leadership. A Twenty-First Century Approach to Community Change introduces readers to the basis for the Foundation's solicitation of social work expertise and the social context within which the work of technical assistance began. Building on research, the authors introduce the theory and practice knowledge of earlier scholars, including the conduct of needs assessments at multiple levels, engagement of community members in identifying problem-solving strategies, assistance in developing community goals, and implementation of social work field instruction opportunities. Lessons learned and challenges are described as they played out in the process of creating partnerships for the Foundation with community leaders, engaging and maintaining youth involvement, managing roles and relationships with multiple partners recruited by the Foundation for their specialized expertise, and ultimately conducting the work of technical assistance within a context of increasing influence of the city's surrounding systems (political, economic, educational, and social). Readers will especially note the role of technical assistance in an evolving theory of change.

A Day of Life: Moments in Time takes mankind as a protagonist on a daily journey through time where one human seven billion days ago counts down to day one and an environment coping with seven billion humans. The author tries to create a conscious awareness within the reader of the five life-forms and the six constants-the imbalance of which has plagued mankind to this day. A Day of Life is meant to encourage the reader to draw his or her own conclusions regarding the life-forms and constants and to make choices as to the immanency of a possible systemic collapse from exponential expansion.

Digital Theology is a rapidly emerging field of academic research and gaining traction with scholars of Computer Science, Theology, Sociology of Religion and the wider Humanities. This book explores Digital Theology from a Computer Science perspective, providing a comprehensive definition of the subject and setting the agenda for future work in the field for both academics and practitioners. A range of Digital Theology case studies highlight the challenges, and successes, and the lessons learned which can be applied to future situations. The book also includes a timely analysis of the role that digital technology has played in the response of the global church to specific world events; clarifying a number of turning points which have driven dramatic and rapid change in church operating models.