Addendum to Cultures of the States: Statistical Information About Each of the 50 States for Lawmakers, Students, Teachers, and Interested Citizens is a supplement to Cultures of the States: A Handbook on the Effectiveness of State Governments that was published by Scarecrow Press, Inc., Lanham, Maryland, and Oxford in 2003. Addendum includes approximately 600 new tables, in addition to the 700 tables published originally in the Cultures book, each of which is presented as a ranking of the states on factors such as death rates by cause, teenager''s problems, per capita income, taxes paid to various levels of government, population, voting, educational achievement, educational attainment, drug and alcohol abuse, juvenile delinquency, birth weights, incarceration rates, expenditures for incarcerated prisoners, and the like. The purpose of this book is to provide interested persons with information that relates directly to public policy. Developing appropriate and effective public policy requires current statistical information about each state, and how that statistical information has changed over time. This book includes diverse information in a standardized format (i.e., rankings of the states) that will enable both researchers and policymakers in any state to compare that state with any other state on hundreds of variables that relate directly to implementation and effectiveness of public policy decisions. And all of this statistical information is available from the senior author on a compact disk in SPSS format.

Some states are governed better than other states. Whatever it is that state governments do, some do it more effectively and more consistently than other states. And that is a difficult message to share. "Problem states" simply do not want to hear about it. They do not want to be compared, head on, with states that do better at governing than they do. They want to say: "It's all about money " And money is a problem, but it's more than money. It's attitudes and history, and more. Much more As we have tried to think this problem through, we have slowly become aware of something that may be related to this whole problems area: the reluctance of many state officials to acknowledge that they have problems of any kind, except those that pertain to money. Each of the three monograph-type documents included in this book examine a specific problem area by separating the states into high and low groups on a given variable, then comparing those two groups of states on hundreds of other variables. These are simple but powerful analyses, and the results highlight how the two groups of states differ. Some persons are uncomfortable looking at "good states" and "bad states," as they describe these groups that we compare, but comparisons are important. There are difficulties with making comparisons that are helpful, but comparisons highlight pros and cons, problems and possibilities, rights and wrongs, and comparisons of states can help citizens make more informed and better choices about who they want to exercise power on their behalf. "People who do not know" have problems, but "people who do not know that that do not know" have very serious problems that are generally insurmountable, unless theyhave a system that "helps them know" more fully and more accurately exactly what their problems are. People can cope with problems, if others help them, but when they do not even know that they have a problem, that in itself makes it difficult to resolve things satisfactorily (i.e., for the benefit and welfare of all involved). And when citizens are force-fed ideologies and platitudes rather than facts, discernment of right from wrong and good from bad is difficult beyond belief.

Murder in America is an extension and expansion of the research that Jack Frymier and Arliss Roaden described in Cultures of the States: A Handbook on the Effectiveness of State Governments (Lanham, Maryland and Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 411 pp.) that was published in 2003. States differ, and they differ in ways that make a huge difference for those who live in different states. Murder in America is a comparison of states that had high murder rates over a 39-year period with states that had low murder rates over that same period on such things as voting behavior, other crime rates, problems of teenagers, tax rates, death rates by cause, educational achievement, employment opportunities, health care, and personal income. When it became obvious that murder rates--of and by--young Black Americans were "out of sight," an in-depth study of that problem resulted in an "hypothesis" to help understand such aberrant behavior. The hypothesis is set forth in detail as one possible explanation of why murder rates of Black Americans are so high. The hypothesis may also be useful in explaining why school achievement rates of Black Americans lag behind school achievement rates of most other racial and ethnic groups in this country.