Managing Urban America guides students through the challenges, politics, and practice of urban management-including managing conflict through politics, adapting to demographic and social changes, balancing budgets, and delivering a myriad of goods and services to citizens in an efficient, equitable, and responsive manner. The Eighth Edition has been thoroughly updated to include a discussion of the difficulties cities confront as they deal with the lingering economic challenges of the 2008 recession, the concept of e-government and how it affects the theory and practice of management, and the implications of environmental issues for urban government management.

Oklahoma is a plains state exemplifying the Middle American virtues of family, lodge, and church; a southern state in the path of the power shift from the indus-trial East to the energy-rich sunbelt; a western state of modern cowboys and rodeos. Small wonder its political culture is so varied. The authors of "Oklahoma Politics and Policies" contend that Oklahoma is a paradox--a state struggling for a clear sense of identity where the old and new vie for the allegiance of its citizens. David R. Morgan, Robert E. England, and George O. Humphreys examine the history of Oklahoma and the place of Native Americans in this former Indian Territory; the state's links to the federal government; its executive, legislative, and judicial systems; political parties and interest groups; local government; and the current policy issues that confront its citizens. They assess the attempts of Oklahomans to revive their economy. The 1990s will be bright, the authors sug-gest, if Oklahomans can put aside internal conflicts and the politics of negativism in approaching economic and social problems more pragmatically.