From the night watchmen of the 17th century to the highly publicized Rodney King hearings, the history and development of police policy and the role of police in American society are traced through this collection of 95 primary documents. Students, teachers, and interested readers can use this valuable resource to examine the development and role of the police in the United States through the words of the people who were involved in the struggle to enforce laws, uphold the Constitution, maintain safe and stable communities, and create efficient and effective police forces. An explanatory introduction precedes each document to aid the user in understanding the economic, political, social, and legislative forces that helped shape the role of the police in our society.

Riots, strikes, commission reports, innovations, groundbreaking studies, and major court cases from different time periods are presented in a balanced manner. This volume is divided into seven parts, each part representing a different time period in which the roles of the police were being redefined. Vila and Morris present the reader with theories from different professionals on what the role of the police should be and how to develop these roles, as well as presenting successful and unsuccessful models to help readers draw their own conclusions.

Both sides of the highly charged capital punishment debate in the United States are examined in this breakthrough collection of 112 key documents, arranged by historical period. The political and social aspects of the debate are represented through a wide range of documents, including congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, position papers, biographical accounts, and news stories. An explanatory introduction precedes each document to help readers understand how various and seemingly unrelated social, economic, and political factors have impacted public attitudes, legislation, and judicial decisions pertaining to capital punishment.

Vila and Morris provide us with the historical and ecological framework in which this centuries-old debate has unfolded. This volume is organized into six parts, each one representing a different time period: Colonial Era to Independence, 1800-1917, 1918-1959, 1960-1976, 1977-1989, and the 1990s. The documents provided in each part trace the history and development of the debate, chronicling the ebb and flow of support for the death penalty during different periods in our country's history. Special attention is paid to the effects of particular events in history--the American Revolution, the Great Depression, and the Civil Rights movement, for example--on the ever-changing opinions concerning capital punishment. The representation of both sides of the debate found in these documents will encourage and challenge students, policymakers, and concerned citizens to examine their own viewpoints and draw their own conclusions on the capital punishment debate.

Lily Heller's affaire de coeur with Paris has existed almost as long as her love for books. Smitten with the city's literary Golden Age of the twenties, the young bookstore clerk from Denver dreams of a life like that of bold expatriate Sylvia Beach, who founded the famed Shakespeare and Company bookshop and became her own literary legend. An impromptu trip to the City of Light carries Lily further than her imagination ever took her. Arriving unexpectedly in 1937 Paris-penniless, friendless, and clueless-Lily must rely on her wobbly French and her wits. But a mysterious invitation offers her entree into the glittering inner circle of Sylvia Beach herself. This clue leads her further into the complex and dangerous Paris on the brink of war-and it's not the friendly literary community she had imagined. Lily becomes a character inside the world that she had fantasized about-but with chilling consequences. In her quest to return home, Lily finds herself enmeshed in an undercover league of time-traveling bibliophiles. Charged with a daunting task, along the way Lily falls for a gallant young Frenchman, discusses the art of writing with Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, and runs afoul of a dashing Nazi agent. In order to escape unscathed, Lily must make choices that force her to reconcile her past and that may revise literary history forever. A celebration of a timeless city's allure, an engaging romantic fantasy, and a valentine to book lovers in every era, Chasing Sylvia Beach is a novel to savor and be spellbound by. "Morris captures all the excitement that a time traveler might feel if she suddenly landed in interwar Paris. Chasing Sylvia Beach compares bookselling in 1937 to bookselling now. Its modern heroine, Lily Heller, is endearing and resourceful, teaching the patron saint of independent bookstores a thing or two from the future. Morris gives us a nuanced, complex portrait of the beloved bookseller Sylvia Beach." -Keri Walsh, editor of The Letters of Sylvia Beach