Discontent with politics and politicians has lead to calls for term-limiting elected legislators to a specified period of service - in the belief that new faces would bring new perspectives and the influence of monied special interests would decrease. This innovative volume examines the effects of term limits by combining statistical analysis of the effects of term limits on electoral competition, campaign contributions, and the activities of the Michigan legislature with in-depth interviews with legislators. The book thus sheds important light on the political, institutional and individual effects of term limits. The authors find many surprises that neither advocate nor oppose anticipated, included shifts in the balance of power, changes within and between political parties, and new career paths for politicians.

"Black women are dope because they rise and are yet rising. This dopeness is not hyperbolic or symbolic-rather, it is borne of persecution that has failed to frustrate a perseverant persistence to prevail." Before sea to shining sea. Before spacious skies were pierced by purple mountains. Before the uniting of one nation. Black women learned to rise. In POWER: THE RISE OF BLACK WOMEN IN AMERICA, award-winning journalist and digital media executive Charity C. Elder posits that there has never been a better time to be a Black woman in the United States. POWER is an incisive disquisition on Black womanhood weaving theoretical frameworks of history and sociology with poignant interviews, ethnographic observation, and anecdotes gleaned from history, social media, pop culture, and the author's lived experiences. Using data, the author substantiates the triumph of Black women. Original analysis of eighty years of US census data, prepared by the University of Minnesota and analyzed by Dr. Constance F. Citro, documents the remarkable ascension of Black women since the early twentieth century. An exclusive national survey conducted in partnership with the Marist Poll in 2021 not only reveals that 70 percent of Black women say they have been successful in life, but also that most believe they have the power to succeed. POWER does not shy away from the realities of structural oppression identified by the late Black feminist scholar bell hooks; rather it illuminates how Black women exercise agency to create meaningful lives. Success is not an anomaly, but a defining characteristic. Black women have amassed power-now, Elder posits, they need to acknowledge it and then wield the hell out of it.

This Festschrift brings together 28 invited papers surveying the state of the art in language testing. The papers, by key figures in the field of language testing, cover issues ranging from test construct definition to the design and applications of language tests, including their importance as a means of exploring larger issues in language teaching, language learning and language policy.The volume locates work in language assessment in a context of social, political and ethical issues at a time when testing is increasingly expected to be publicly accountable. It is thus particularly appropriate as a tribute to Alan Davies, whose work in this field since the 1960s has been marked by its conceptual strength and social responsiveness,seeking constantly to clarify and challengecurrent practice and new trends.

"Scholars, practioners, journalists and voters who read this important contribution to the study of state legislative term limits will have a better understanding the consequences in Michigan, California and around the country. The book examines pre and post term limits data to identify effects in the political environment, personal characteristics of legislators, and governing institutions. While focusing on Michigan, comparisons with California provide additional support for the findings regarding composition, competition, and action."
--Rick Farmer, University of Akron
"Term limits is one of the most hotly-debated topics in state politics today, and this book provides unexpected findings and new insights that will make compelling reading for scholars, practitioners, and anyone who cares about democracy and policymaking. This carefully-constructed, rigorous study provides an in-depth, detailed picture of the state legislature in electoral politics and governance over time, before and after term limits. The portrait is a troubling one that largely contradicts the aims of term limit reforms - weakening electoral competition, lessening democratic responsiveness, and strengthening the role of lobbyists in policymaking. Beyond the considerable contribution that this study makes to academic research on the topic, its lucid style and concrete policy recommendations should enhance its appeal to the broad audience it deserves."
--Karen Mossberger, Kent State University

As featured in Bill Moyers's PBS special "Spirit and Nature," leaders from major traditions around the world speak out in this volume about what spiritual resources we may turn to in our age of unprecedented danger to the planet.

Small farms once occupied the heights that John Elder calls home, but now only a few cellar holes and tumbled stone walls remain among the dense stands of maple, beech, and hemlocks on these Vermont hills. "Reading the Mountains of Home"is a journey into these verdant reaches where in the last century humans tried their hand and where bear and moose now find shelter. As John Elder is our guide, so Robert Frost is Elder's companion, his great poem "Directive" seeing us through a landscape in which nature and literature, loss and recovery, are inextricably joined.

Over the course of a year, Elder takes us on his hikes through the forested uplands between South Mountain and North Mountain, reflecting on the forces of nature, from the descent of the glaciers to the rush of the New Haven River, that shaped a plateau for his village of Bristol; and on the human will that denuded and farmed and abandoned the mountains so many years ago. His forays wind through the flinty relics of nineteenth-century homesteads and Abenaki settlements, leading to meditations on both human failure and the possibility for deeper communion with the land and others.

An exploration of the body and soul of a place, an interpretive map of its natural and literary life, "Reading the Mountains of Home" strikes a moving balance between the pressures of civilization and the attraction of wilderness. It is a beautiful work of nature writing in which human nature finds its place, where the reader is invited to follow the last line of Frost's "Directive," to "Drink and be whole again beyond confusion."