Far too many poor Black communities struggle with gun violence and homicide. The result has been the unnatural contortion of Black families and the inter-generational perpetuation of social chaos and untimely death. Young people are repeatedly ripped away from life by violence, while many men are locked away in prisons. In neighborhoods like those of Wilmington, Delaware, residents routinely face the pressures of violence, death, and incarceration. Murder Town, USA is thus a timely ethnography with an innovative structure: the authors helped organize fifteen residents formerly involved with the streets and/or the criminal justice system to document the relationship between structural opportunity and experiences with violence in Wilmington's Eastside and Southbridge neighborhoods.  Earlier scholars offered rich cultural analysis of violence in low-income Black communities, and yet this literature has mostly conceptualized violence through frameworks of personal responsibility or individual accountability. And even if acknowledging the pressure of structural inequality, most earlier researchers describe violence as the ultimate result of some moral failing, a propensity for crime, and the notion of helplessness. Instead, in Murder Town USA, Payne, Hitchens, and Chamber, along with their collaborative team of street ethnographers, instead offer a radical re-conceptualization of violence in low-income Black communities by describing the penchant for violence and involvement in crime overall to be a logical, "resilient" response to the perverse context of structural inequality.

The Great Depression of the 1930s often recalls images of the drought-stricken Great Plains. Prolonged drought exacerbated the economic effects of the Great Depression to such a degree that the prairies became the epicentre of the disaster in Canada. Between 1929 and 1932, per capita incomes fell by 49% in Manitoba, 61% in Alberta and an astounding 72% in Saskatchewan. The result was enormous social and political upheaval that sent shockwaves through the rest of the country. In this sixth volume of the History of the Prairie West series, contributors explore the cultural, political, and economic repercussions of climate change and financial upheaval on the region and its people.

How an obscure Puritan sermon came to be seen as a founding document of American identity and exceptionalism "For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill," John Winthrop warned his fellow Puritans at New England's founding in 1630. More than three centuries later, Ronald Reagan remade that passage into a timeless celebration of American promise. How were Winthrop's long-forgotten words reinvented as a central statement of American identity and exceptionalism? In As a City on a Hill, leading American intellectual historian Daniel Rodgers tells the surprising story of one of the most celebrated documents in the canon of the American idea. In doing so, he brings to life the ideas Winthrop's text carried in its own time and the sharply different yearnings that have been attributed to it since. As a City on a Hill shows how much more malleable, more saturated with vulnerability, and less distinctly American Winthrop's "Model of Christian Charity" was than the document that twentieth-century Americans invented. Across almost four centuries, Rodgers traces striking shifts in the meaning of Winthrop's words-from Winthrop's own anxious reckoning with the scrutiny of the world, through Abraham Lincoln's haunting reference to this "almost chosen people," to the "city on a hill" that African Americans hoped to construct in Liberia, to the era of Donald Trump. As a City on a Hill reveals the circuitous, unexpected ways Winthrop's words came to lodge in American consciousness. At the same time, the book offers a probing reflection on how nationalism encourages the invention of "timeless" texts to straighten out the crooked realities of the past.

"MASTERFUL."
--The Washington Post Book World
"RIVETING . . . UNFOLDS LIKE A DETECTIVE STORY."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review
In July 1991, nine skeletons were exhumed from a shallow mass grave near Ekaterinburg, Siberia, a few miles from the infamous cellar room where the last tsar and his family had been murdered seventy-three years before. But were these the bones of the Romanovs? And if these were their remains, where were the bones of the two younger Romanovs supposedly murdered with the rest of the family? Was Anna Anderson, celebrated for more than sixty years in newspapers, books, and film, really Grand Duchess Anastasia?
The Romanovs: The Final Chapter provides answers, describing in suspenseful detail the dramatic efforts in post-Communist Russia to discover the truth. This unique story, written by Pulitzer Prize winner Robert K. Massie, presents a colorful panorama of contemporary characters, illuminating the major scientific dispute between Russian experts and a team of Americans, including Drs. William Maples and Michael Baden--fiercely antagonistic forensic experts whose findings, along with those of DNA scientists from Russia, America, and Great Britain, all contributed to solving one of the greatest mysteries of the twentieth century.
"AN ADMIRABLE SCIENTIFIC THRILLER."
--The New York Times Book Review
"COMPELLING . . . A FASCINATING ACCOUNT."
--Chicago Tribune
"A MASTERPIECE OF INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING."
--San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle

This book examines recognition of new states, the practice historically employed to regulate membership in international society. The last twenty years have witnessed new or lingering demands for statehood in different areas of the world. The claims of some, like those of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Eritrea, Croatia, Georgia and East Timor, have achieved general recognition; those of others, like Kosovo, Tamil Eelam, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Somaliland, have not. However, even as most of these claims gave rise to major conflicts and international controversies, the criteria for acknowledgment of new states have elicited little systematic scholarship.
Drawing upon writings of English School theorists, this study charts the practice from the late eighteenth century until the present. Its central argument is that for the past two hundred years state recognition has been tied to the idea of self-determination of peoples. Two versions of the idea have underpinned the practice throughout most of this period--self-determination as a negative and a positive right. The negative idea, dominant from 1815 to 1950, took state recognition to be acknowledgment of an achievement of de facto statehood by a people desiring independence. Self-determination was expressed through, and externally gauged by, self-attainment. The positive idea, prevalent since the 1950s, took state recognition to be acknowledgment of an entitlement to independence in international law. The development of self-determination as a positive international right, however, has not led to a disappearance of claims of statehood that stand outside of its confines. Groups that are deeply dissatisfied with the countries in which they presently find themselves continue to make demands for independence even though they may have no positive entitlement to it. The book concludes by expressing doubt that contemporary international society can find a sustainable basis for recognizing new states other than the original standard of de facto statehood.

Animal Fables of the Courtly Mediterranean is a treasure trove of stories and lessons on how to conduct oneself and succeed in life, sometimes through cleverness rather than virtue. They feature human and many animal protagonists, including the two jackals Stephanites and Ichnelates, after whom the book is named, as well as several lion kings. At the heart of this work are tales from the Sanskrit Panchatantra and Mahabharata, to which more were added, both in the original Middle Persian collection and its eighth-century Arabic translation, the widely known Kalila wa-Dimna. In the eleventh century, readers in Constantinople were introduced to these stories through an abbreviated Greek version, translated by Symeon Seth from the Arabic. The new Byzantine Greek text and English translation presented here is a more complete version, originating in twelfth-century Sicily and connected with Admiral Eugenius of Palermo. It contains unique prefaces and reinstates the prologues and stories omitted by Seth.

In the early 1930s Soviet authorities launched a campaign to create "socialist" retailing and also endorsed Soviet consumerism. How did the Stalinist regime reconcile retailing and consumption with socialism? This book examines the discourses that the Stalinist regime's new approach to retailing and consumption engendered.

This work offers a major new interpretation of the Stalin's role in the gestation of the Cold War. Based on important new evidence, Dimitrov reveals Stalin's genuine efforts to preserve his World War II alliance with the US and Britain and to encourage a degree of cooperation between communists and democratic parties in Eastern Europe.

Bringing together leading authorities and cutting edge scholars, this collection re-examines the defining concepts of Stalinism and the Stalinization odel. The aim of the book is to explore how the common imperatives of a centralized movement were experienced across national boundaries.

Stressing the relationship between tsarism's service-state ethos and its utilization of subjects, this study argues that economic and political, rather than judicial or penological, factors primarily conditioned Siberian exile's growth and development.

The only people tougher than the bank and train robbers of the Old West were the citizens who banded together to create law and order on the streets of their towns. Shoemakers and storekeepers, bank men and local lawmen, barbers and liverymen--they all fought to defend their homes and to defend their lives against the outlaws who threatened them.
Tough towns faced down famous gangs like the Daltons and the James-Youngers, drove off Mexican bandits, killed Pretty Boy Floyd's chief lieutenant, and helped put an end to the nineteenth-century rash of bank robbing in the West. Ordinary-people-turned-heroes joined their neighbors and fought--and sometimes died--because they wouldn't run away or turn a blind eye to crime. Their stories, told by historian and writer Robert Barr Smith, are a fascinating part of the legend of the Old West.

This book traces representations of "Gypsies" that have become prevalent in the European imagination and culture and influenced the perceptions of Roma in Eastern and Western European societies.

Since its inception, the U.S.-Mexico border has invited the creation of cultural, economic, and political networks that often function in defiance of surrounding nation-states. It has also produced individual and group identities that are as subversive as they are dynamic. In Are We Not Foreigners Here?, Jeffrey M. Schulze explores how the U.S.-Mexico border shaped the concepts of nationhood and survival strategies of three Indigenous tribes who live in this borderland: the Yaqui, Kickapoo, and Tohono O'odham. These tribes have historically fought against nation-state interference, employing strategies that draw on their transnational orientation to survive and thrive. Schulze details the complexities of the tribes' claims to nationhood in the context of the border from the nineteenth century to the present. He shows that in spreading themselves across two powerful, omnipresent nation-states, these tribes managed to maintain separation from currents of federal Indian policy in both countries; at the same time, it could also leave them culturally and politically vulnerable, especially as surrounding powers stepped up their efforts to control transborder traffic. Schulze underlines these tribes' efforts to reconcile their commitment to preserving their identities, asserting their nationhood, and creating transnational links of resistance with an increasingly formidable international boundary.

"Ambitious, fast-paced, fact-filled, and accessible." -Science "A compelling case for why achieving the right balance of time with our families...is vital to the economic success and prosperity of our nation... A must read." -Maria Shriver From backyard barbecues to the blogosphere, working men and women across the country are raising the same worried question: How can I get ahead at my job while making sure my family doesn't suffer? A visionary economist who has looked at the numbers behind the personal stories, Heather Boushey argues that resolving the work-life conflict is as vital for us personally as it is essential economically. Finding Time offers ingenious ways to help us carve out the time we need, while showing businesses that more flexible policies can actually make them more productive. "Supply and demand curves are suddenly 'sexy' when Boushey uses them to prove that paid sick days, paid family leave, flexible work schedules, and affordable child care aren't just cutesy women's issues for families to figure out 'on their own time and dime,' but economic issues affecting the country at large." -Vogue "Boushey argues that better family-leave policies should not only improve the lives of struggling families but also boost workers' productivity and reduce firms' costs." -The Economist

Women in Russian Culture and Society, 1700-1825 is a collection of essays by leading researchers shedding new light on women as writers, actresses, nuns and missionaries. It illuminates the lives of merchant and serf women as well as noblewomen and focuses on women's culture in Russia during this period.

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring The Arctic is demanding global attention. It is warming, melting, and thawing in a manner that threatens fundamental state-change. For communities that call the Arctic 'home' this is unwelcome. A warming Arctic brings with it the spectre of costly disruption and interference in indigenous lives and communal welfare. For others, the disappearance of sea ice makes the Arctic appear more accessible and less remote. This also brings with it dangers such as the prospect of a new era of great power rivalries involving China, Russia, and the United States. Submarine and long-range bomber patrolling are now commonplace. New terms such as 'global Arctic' are being used to capture the dynamic of change while others muse about the 'return of a Cold War'. The reality is inevitably more complex. The physical geography of the Arctic is highly varied and variable. Environmental change brings opportunities for indigenous and non-indigenous life-forms to survive and even thrive. The Arctic's four million people are not helpless pawns in a game of global geopolitics. The Arctic is not only a resource hotspot but also a place where sustainable energy systems are being introduced. A warming Arctic with less ice and permafrost is not unique in the longer history of the Earth either. The Arctic is a complex space. In this Very Short Introduction, Klaus Dodds and Jamie Woodward consider the major dimensions of the region and the linkages beyond - from the geopolitical to the environmental. They examine the causes, drivers, and effects of cultural, physical, political, and economic change, and ponder the future of the Arctic. As they show, it is a future which will affect us all. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

A biodiversity hotspot, Florida is home to many ecosystems and species that depend on frequent fire to exist. In this book, Reed Noss discusses the essential role of fire in generating biodiversity and offers best practices for using fire to keep the region's ecosystems healthy and resilient. Reviewing fossil evidence, Noss shows that fire has been important to the Southeastern Coastal Plain for tens of millions of years. He explains how the region's natural fire patterns are connected to its climate, high rate of lightning strikes, physical chemistry, and vegetation. But urbanization has recently reduced the frequency and range of these fires in profound ways. Noss believes the practice of controlled burns can and should be improved in order to protect fire-dependent species from extinction. Noss argues that fire managers should mimic the natural fire regimes of an area when conducting controlled burns. Based on what the species of the Southeast experienced during their evolutionary histories, he makes recommendations about pyrodiversity, how often and in what seasons to burn, the optimal heterogeneity of burns, mechanical treatments such as cutting and roller-chopping, and the proper use of fuel breaks. In doing so, Noss is the first to apply the new discipline of evolutionary fire ecology to a specific region. This book is a fascinating history of fire ecology in Florida, an enlightening look at why fire matters to the region, and a necessary resource for conservationists and fire managers in the state and surrounding areas.

Richard Tames describes how London has been chronicled, described, celebrated, named, and mapped over the twenty centuries of its existence to become a city treasured even by those who have never set foot in it as a byword for innovation and diversity. This book has been written for those who, knowing London, know that it is too vast, too complex, too elusive ever to be fully known but yet would like to know it better still.

This is a densely researched and comprehensive examination of the deep history of the region from the time of European settlement to the present day. Taking an expansive approach to local history, it examines how the broad channels of the American narrative played out in the development of an iconic region that became a prototype for suburban living. The first modern narrative history of the county, Westchester places its colorful characters and larger-than-life personas within the context of their changing times, recounting the county's social and economic history in compelling, biographic detail. Drawn from letters, court records, archives, oral histories and newspaper accounts, the book uncovers a rich, complex and often surprising past that contradicts a popular belief that the suburbs are somehow less compelling subjects of historical inquiry than their big-city neighbors. Forgotten or never-told stories of silent film stars, gangland violence, Jim Crow segregation, immigration, political riots, slavery, anti-Semitism, industry, cultural pioneers, eccentric millionaires, suffragettes, aviation, drugs, jailbreaks, man-made disasters and assassinations are recounted in depth. Through four hundred years of history, the book chronicles the men and women who faced countless struggles at home-and the global conflicts that changed them and the local landscape forever. Their stories reveal the layered past of New York City's archetypal suburb and how it looks to the future.

The Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest inhabit a vast region extending from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and from California to British Columbia. For more than two decades, "A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest "has served as a standard reference on these diverse peoples. Now, in the wake of renewed tribal self-determination, this revised edition reflects the many recent political, economic, and cultural developments shaping these Native communities.

From such well-known tribes as the Nez Perces and Cayuses to lesser-known bands previously presumed "extinct," this guide offers detailed descriptions, in alphabetical order, of 150 Pacific Northwest tribes. Each entry provides information on the history, location, demographics, and cultural traditions of the particular tribe.

Among the new features offered here are an expanded selection of photographs, updated reading lists, and a revised pronunciation guide. While continuing to provide succinct histories of each tribe, the volume now also covers such contemporary--and sometimes controversial--issues as Indian gaming and NAGPRA. With its emphasis on Native voices and tribal revitalization, this new edition of the" Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest" is certain to be a definitive reference for many years to come.

This is the first comprehensive biography of Molotov and reflects the range of sources that have become available to historians since the fall of the USSR. It is a commentary on Soviet history. Molotov played his part in revolution, Civil War, Lenin's Russia, Stalin's struggle with the oppositions, collectivization, industrialization, the Terror, the Great Patriotic War, the beginnings of the Cold War, and in the Khrushchev era.

From 1941-1944 Leningrad saw by far the largest-scale famine ever to occur in a developed society. This book examines the nature and consequences of the extreme conditions created by the German blockade of Leningrad between September 1941 and January 1944. Using declassified documents from Party and State archives in Moscow and St Petersburg and interviews with survivors, the authors have produced the most informed and detailed analysis to date of the impact of the siege on the lives and health of the people of Leningrad.

This book defines Russophobia as the irrational fear of Russia, a key theme in the study of propaganda in the West as Russia has throughout history been assigned a diametrically opposite identity as the "Other." Propaganda is the science of convincing an audience without appealing to reason. The West and Russia have been juxtaposed as Western versus Eastern, European versus Asiatic, civilized versus barbaric, modern versus backward, liberal versus autocratic, and even good versus evil. During the Cold War, ideological dividing lines fell naturally by casting the debate as capitalism versus communism, democracy versus totalitarianism, and Christianity versus atheism. After the Cold War, anti-Russian propaganda aims to filter all political questions through the simplistic binary stereotype of democracy versus authoritarianism, which provides little if any heuristic value to understand the complexities of relations. A key feature of propaganda against the inferior "Other" is both contemptuous derision and panic-stricken fear of the threat to civilization. Russia has therefore throughout history been allowed to play one of two roles-either an apprentice of Western civilization by accepting the subordinate role as the student and political object, or a threat that must be contained or defeated. While propaganda has the positive effect of promoting unity and mobilizing resources toward rational and strategic objectives, it can also have the negative effect of creating irrational decision-making and obstructing a workable peace.