This book presents the healthcare reform experiences of six small- to mid-sized, but dynamic, economies spanning the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Europe. Usually not given serious consideration in major international comparisons because of their small size, each in fact provides a fascinating case study that illuminates the understanding of the dynamics of healthcare reform. Although dissimilar in historical and cultural backgrounds, they share some important features: all faced very similar pressures for change in the 1970s and 1980s; all considered a very similar range of policy options; and all did not only discuss but actually implemented fundamental changes in their healthcare funding, organization, contracting and governance structures with strikingly different outcomes.All of the authors have lived and worked in one or more of the countries studied in this volume. The analytic frameworks they use reflect their broad range of professional and disciplinary backgrounds in health economics and political science. Beyond mere descriptions of reform processes and superficial analyses based on aggregate data from the usual OECD or WHO sources, they seek to understand - and explain - the variations in country experiences by examining the politico-socio-economic factors driving health reform as seen through the respective country lenses. In coming together in this unique international collaboration, they make an important contribution to the growing field of international comparative health policy studies.Contributors: Tsung-Mei Cheng (Princeton University, USA), David Chinitz (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel), Luca Crivelli and Iva Bolgiani (University of Lugano, Switzerland), Meng-Kin Lim (National University of Singapore, Singapore), Kieke G H Okma and Hans Maarse (Maastricht University, The Netherlands), Toni Ashton and Tim Tenbensel (University of Auckland, New Zealand).

Tony Rawlins does not think he is a stupidly gullible man. Forlorn and desperate to extricate himself from the aftereffects of a bad marriage, he attempts to find romance by answering a provocative personal ad. Unfortunately, Rawlins is about to find himself victimized by the woman he had hoped would cure his loneliness. Now she has accused him of killing her husband. Innocent but convicted on her convincing testimony, Rawlins heads to jail. Soon, and much to his relief, new evidence is uncovered that casts his accuser's story in doubt. She vanishes, and the conviction is set aside until she can be found. Vindicated at least for the time being, Rawlins returns to work where he unwittingly uncovers an illegal business that soon reveals the real reason for the murder. But now others are turning up dead-including the woman who accused him of murder. In a mystery trilogy of novellas filled with surprising twists and turns, Rawlins must decide who he can trust-and who he cannot-as he attempts to untangle himself from a dangerous and very determined web of fatal females.

This book explores Langston Hughes's efforts to mediate problems of identity and ethics he faced as an African-American professional writer and intellectual. Determined on a literary career at a time when no African American had yet been able to live off his or her writing; constrained by poverty, racism, and lack of opportunity; and pressed by the hopes, expectations, and demands of readers and critics of all stripes, Hughes had to rely on his dexterity as a mediator among competing positions in order to preserve his art, his integrity, and his unique status as the literary voice of ordinary African Americans. Issues treated include Hughes's interventions in the shifting definition of "authentic blackness," his work toward a socially effectual discourse of racial protest, his involvement with liberal politics, his ambivalence toward moral compromise even as he engaged in it, and the imprint of all these matters in texts ranging from his poetry and fiction to his essays and newspaper columns. The conflicting facts, varied experiences, divided impulses, and thorny compromises of his own life led Hughes to develop artistically an inclusive vision of the black community that anticipates by several decades what many cultural critics have come to advocate. The book is also the first to analyze Hughes's executive-session testimony before Joseph McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which was treated as classified information for fifty years before finally being released to the public in 2003.

Originally published in 1972. Hoover's first publication, his doctoral dissertation, set the stage for a life-long preoccupation with spatial economics from when it was a relatively new field. His work developed the subject and lead him into the area of regional economics, in which he became well known for his contributions to the New York Metropolitan Region Study. In this book his colleagues and a host of former students and admirers present chapters written within his areas of interest in honor of his work, at the end of his academic career, during which he mostly taught at the University of Michigan and the University of Pittsburgh.

This book presents the healthcare reform experiences of six small- to mid-sized, but dynamic, economies spanning the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Europe. Usually not given serious consideration in major international comparisons because of their small size, each in fact provides a fascinating case study that illuminates the understanding of the dynamics of healthcare reform. Although dissimilar in historical and cultural backgrounds, they share some important features: all faced very similar pressures for change in the 1970s and 1980s; all considered a very similar range of policy options; and all did not only discuss but actually implemented fundamental changes in their healthcare funding, organization, contracting and governance structures with strikingly different outcomes.All of the authors have lived and worked in one or more of the countries studied in this volume. The analytic frameworks they use reflect their broad range of professional and disciplinary backgrounds in health economics and political science. Beyond mere descriptions of reform processes and superficial analyses based on aggregate data from the usual OECD or WHO sources, they seek to understand - and explain - the variations in country experiences by examining the politico-socio-economic factors driving health reform as seen through the respective country lenses. In coming together in this unique international collaboration, they make an important contribution to the growing field of international comparative health policy studies.Contributors: Tsung-Mei Cheng (Princeton University, USA), David Chinitz (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel), Luca Crivelli and Iva Bolgiani (University of Lugano, Switzerland), Meng-Kin Lim (National University of Singapore, Singapore), Kieke G H Okma and Hans Maarse (Maastricht University, The Netherlands), Toni Ashton and Tim Tenbensel (University of Auckland, New Zealand).

Which Sin To Bear? mines Langston Hughes's creative work, newspaper columns, letters, and unpublished papers to reveal a writer who faced a daunting array of dicey questions and intimidating obstacles, and whose triumphs and occasional missteps are a fascinating and telling part of his legacy. David E. Chinitz explores Hughes's efforts to negotiate the problems of identity and ethics he faced as an African American professional writer and intellectual, tracing his early efforts to fashion himself as an "authentic" black poet of the Harlem Renaissance and his later imagining of a new and more inclusive understanding of authentic blackness. He also examines Hughes's lasting yet self-critical commitment to progressive politics in the mid-century years and shows how, in spite of ambivalence-and, at times, anguish-Hughes was forced to engage in ethical compromises to achieve his personal and social goals.

Someone is Sick..uses a series of humorous tales to expose the dark underside of medicine. The function of specific body parts is meticulously avoided and the text is written in simple language that even physicians can understand.

Tony Rawlins does not think he is a stupidly gullible man. Forlorn and desperate to extricate himself from the aftereffects of a bad marriage, he attempts to find romance by answering a provocative personal ad. Unfortunately, Rawlins is about to find himself victimized by the woman he had hoped would cure his loneliness. Now she has accused him of killing her husband. Innocent but convicted on her convincing testimony, Rawlins heads to jail. Soon, and much to his relief, new evidence is uncovered that casts his accuser's story in doubt. She vanishes, and the conviction is set aside until she can be found. Vindicated at least for the time being, Rawlins returns to work where he unwittingly uncovers an illegal business that soon reveals the real reason for the murder. But now others are turning up dead-including the woman who accused him of murder. In a mystery trilogy of novellas filled with surprising twists and turns, Rawlins must decide who he can trust-and who he cannot-as he attempts to untangle himself from a dangerous and very determined web of fatal females.

Retired engineer Emmett Borden is emotionally drained as he drives away from his home in Mamaroneck, New York. As he heads west toward his childhood roots in Iowa, he just wants to escape from the surroundings that remind him of his beloved wife, who has just died from cancer. But Emmett is about to discover that life is full of surprises. After an exhaustive day of driving, Emmett stops at a lodge to spend the night and strikes up a friendship with the lodge's owner. Edie Adamson shows him her grandfather's exotic artifact collection that includes a bizarre-looking spittoon made from an elephant's right foot. After the two exchange goodbyes, Emmett eventually makes his way to Keonah, Iowa, where he accepts a job as a handyman for Elmer Diehl's hardware store. A short time later, while Emmett is making repairs at an antique shop, he stumbles upon the elephant's missing left foot and is unexpectedly embroiled in the midst of what appears to be a robbery. Suddenly, Emmett's quiet life becomes one spontaneous adventure after the other. In a small town surrounded by corn fields in Iowa, Emmett rediscovers love, friendship, and most importantly, his life's purpose.

The modernist poet T. S. Eliot has been applauded and denounced for decades as a staunch champion of high art and an implacable opponent of popular culture. But Eliot's elitism was never what it seemed. "T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide" refurbishes this great writer for the twenty-first century, presenting him as the complex figure he was, an artist attentive not only to literature but to detective fiction, vaudeville theater, jazz, and the songs of Tin Pan Alley.
David Chinitz argues that Eliot was productively engaged with popular culture in some form at every stage of his career, and that his response to it, as expressed in his poetry, plays, and essays, was ambivalent rather than hostile. He shows that American jazz, for example, was a major influence on Eliot's poetry during its maturation. He discusses Eliot's surprisingly persistent interest in popular culture both in such famous works as "The Waste Land" and in such lesser-known pieces as "Sweeney Agonistes," And he traces Eliot's long, quixotic struggle to close the widening gap between high art and popular culture through a new type of public art: contemporary popular verse drama.
What results is a work that will persuade adherents and detractors alike to return to Eliot and find in him a writer who liked a good show, a good thriller, and a good tune, as well as a "great" poem.