Clement Mansell knows how easy it is to get away with murder. The cool killer is already back on the Detroit scene—thanks to some nifty courtroom... moves by his lawyer—and he's feeling invincible enough to execute a crooked judge on a whim. Lieutenant Raymond Cruz thinks the “Oklahoma Wildman” crossed the line long before this latest outrage, and he's determined to see that the hayseed psycho meets an end he deserves, with a gun pointed at him. But that means a good cop, having to play somewhat fast and loose with the rules . . . in order to maneuver Mansell into a wild Midwest showdown that he can't walk away from.

Cultural historian David Henkin explores the influential but little-noticed role played by reading in New York City's public life between 1825 and 1865.... From the opening of the Erie Canal to the end of the Civil War, New York became a metropolis, and demographic, economic, and physical changes erased the old markers of continuity and order. As New York became a crowded city of strangers, everyday encounters with impersonal signs, papers, and bank notes altered people's perceptions of connectedness to the new world they lived in. The 'ubiquitous urban texts'--from newspapers to paper money, from street signs to handbills--became both indispensable urban guides and apt symbols for a new kind of public life that emerged first in New York. City Reading focuses on four principal categories of public reading: street signs and store signs; handbills and trade cards; newspapers; and paper money. Drawing on a wealth of visual sources and written texts that document the changing cityscape--including novels, diaries, newspapers, municipal guides, and government records--Henkin shows that public acts of reading (to a much greater extent than private, solitary reading) determined how New Yorkers of all backgrounds came to define themselves and their urban community.

Named by Newsweek magazine to its list of "Fifty Books for Our Time."For sixteen years William Whyte walked the streets of New York and other major... cities. With a group of young observers, camera and notebook in hand, he conducted pioneering studies of street life, pedestrian behavior, and city dynamics. City: Rediscovering the Center is the result of that research, a humane, often amusing view of what is staggeringly obvious about the urban environment but seemingly invisible to those responsible for planning it.Whyte uses time-lapse photography to chart the anatomy of metropolitan congestion. Why is traffic so badly distributed on city streets? Why do New Yorkers walk so fast—and jaywalk so incorrigibly? Why aren't there more collisions on the busiest walkways? Why do people who stop to talk gravitate to the center of the pedestrian traffic stream? Why do places designed primarily for security actually worsen it? Why are public restrooms disappearing? "The city is full of vexations," Whyte avers: "Steps too steep; doors too tough to open; ledges you cannot sit on. . . . It is difficult to design an urban space so maladroitly that people will not use it, but there are many such spaces." Yet Whyte finds encouragement in the widespread rediscovery of the city center. The future is not in the suburbs, he believes, but in that center. Like a Greek agora, the city must reassert its most ancient function as a place where people come together face-to-face.

City Rules offers a challenge to students and professionals in urban planning, design, and policy to change the rules of city-building, using... regulations to reinvigorate, rather than stifle, our communities. Emily Talen demonstrates that regulations are a primary detriment to the creation of a desirable urban form. While many contemporary codes encourage sprawl and even urban blight, that hasn't always been the case-and it shouldn't be in the future.  Talen provides a visually rich history, showing how certain eras used rules to produce beautiful, walkable, and sustainable communities, while others created just the opposite. She makes complex regulations understandable, demystifying city rules like zoning and illustrating how written codes translate into real-world consequences. Most importantly, Talen proposes changes to these rules that will actually enhance communities' freedom to develop unique spaces.

Pedro Noguera argues that higher standards and more tests, by themselves, will not make low-income urban students any smarter and the schools they... attend more successful without substantial investment in the communities in which they live. Drawing on extensive research performed in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and Richmond, Noguera demonstrates how school and student achievement is influenced by social forces such as demographic change, poverty, drug trafficking, violence, and social inequity. Readers get a detailed glimpse into the lives of teachers and students working "against the odds" to succeed. Noguera sends a strong message to those who would have urban schools "shape up or shut down": invest in the future of these students and schools, and we can reach the kind of achievement and success that typify only more privileged communities. Public schools are the last best hope for many poor families living in cities across the nation. Noguera gives politicians, policymakers, and the public its own standard to achieve, provide the basic economic and social support so that teachers and students can get the job done!

Whether you work with the urban poor or the urban powerful; volunteer in a ghetto; work as CEO of a business; live in the “hood”; or focus your... ministry on a few people, a neighborhood, or a city to transform the social structure of society—this study will give you new ideas and tools to pursue your calling.

Winner of the Egon Hostovský Prize as the best Czech book of the year, this epic novel powerfully captures the sense of dislocation that followed the... Czechs’ newfound freedom in 1989. More than just the story of its young protagonist—who is part businessman, part gang member, part drifter—it is a novel that includes terrifying dream scenes, Czech and American Indian legends, a nightmarish Eastern European flea market, comic scenes about the literary world, and an oddly tender story of the love between the protagonist and his spiritual sister.

This extraordinary book is both a richly textured portrait of New Haven, Connecticut, and the story of the rise and fall of American cities. Douglas Rae... depicts the reasons for urban decline, explains why government spending has failed to restore urban vitality, and offers suggestions to enhance city life in the future.“A terrific read, moving seductively from the minutiae of neighborhood history to grand global forces.”—Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone“An extraordinarily detailed study of New Haven, tracing the city’s rise in the early part of the 20th century and its fall in the second half—an almost archetypal tale of the American city.”—Edward Rothstein, New York Times“For anyone with the slightest interest in cities, this book is that rare combination: a must-read volume that you can’t put down.”—Planning Magazine“[Rae] has provided the blueprint for the next generation of thinkers and city dwellers who debate the future of urban America. . . . A tour de force of research.”—Paul Bass, New Haven Advocate

The assumptions we make about nature writing too often lead us to see it only as a literature about wilderness or rural areas. This anthology broadens... our awareness of American nature writing by featuring the flora, fauna, geology, and climate that enrich and shape urban life. Set in neither pristine nor exotic environs, these stories and essays take us to rivers, parks, vacant lots, lakes, gardens, and zoos as they convey nature's rich disregard of city limits signs.With writings by women and men from cities in all regions of the country and from different ethnic traditions, the anthology reflects the geographic differences and multicultural makeup of our cities. Works by well-known and emerging contemporary writers are included as well as pieces from important twentieth-century urban nature writers.Since more than 80 percent of Americans now live in urban areas, we need to enlarge our environmental concerns to encompass urban nature. By focusing on urban nature writing, the selections in City Wilds can help develop a more inclusive environmental consciousness, one that includes both the nature we see on a day-to-day basis and how such nearby nature is viewed by writers from diverse cultural backgrounds.

For the first time in history, half of the worlds population is living in mega-cities. Never before have we confronted such a geography of the worlds... people.Analysing cities through spatial understanding, City Worlds explores how different worlds within the city are brought into close proximity. The authors outline new ways to address the ambiguities of cities: their promise and potential, their problems and threats.

Chino, a young journalist, faces the death of his father. At the same time, he writes a story on street clowns, sad characters that roam the streets of... a corrupt and violent Lima. This story by Daniel Alarcon was part of his first book, Guerra a la luz de las velas. Now, in collaboration with artist Sheila Alvarado, the story acquires a new dimension that of a comic strip. The bold visual language of Ciudad de payasos provides us an unforgettable portrait of Lima, the story s central character. Description in Spanish: Chino, un joven periodista de un diario chicha, enfrenta la muerte de su padre. Al mismo tiempo escribe una cronica sobre payasos callejeros, tristes personajes que deambulan por una Lima violenta y corrupta. Este relato de Daniel Alarcon fue incluido en su primer libro, Guerra a la luz de las velas, y ahora, en colaboracion con la artista Sheila Alvarado, adquiere una nueva dimension. En efecto, el formato de novela grafica, sus viñetas e imagenes, sus oscuridades y silencios, parecen encajar idealmente con el tono de la historia original. Con Lima como protagonista, y utilizando un audaz lenguaje visual, Ciudad de payasos genera un impacto entrañable.

The leading critical care textbook since 1988, Civetta, Taylor and Kirby's Critical Care is now in its Fourth Edition, with a new editorial team, over... thirty new chapters, and completely updated information. The book addresses every problem encountered in the intensive care unit and covers surgical critical care more thoroughly than any other text. Each chapter begins with immediate concerns and proceeds to broader-based discussions of relevant pathophysiologic and clinical issues. This edition has new sections on shock states; pharmacology, nutrition, toxicology and the environment; and disaster management. New chapters include bedside ultrasound, point of care testing, neurogenic shock, anaphylactic shock, surgical infections, and acute coronary syndrome. A companion Website will offer instant access to the fully searchable text.

While the American agricultural and food systems follow a decades-old path of industrialization and globalization, a counter trend has appeared toward... localizing some agricultural and food production. Thomas A. Lyson, a scholar-practitioner in the field of community-based food systems, calls this rebirth of locally based agriculture and food production civic agriculture because these activities are tightly linked to a community's social and economic development. Civic agriculture embraces innovative ways to produce, process, and distribute food, and it represents a sustainable alternative to the socially, economically, and environmentally destructive practices associated with conventional large-scale agriculture. Farmers' markets, community gardens, and community-supported agriculture are all forms of civic agriculture. Lyson describes how, in the course of a hundred years, a small-scale, diversified system of farming became an industrialized system of production and also how this industrialized system has gone global. He argues that farming in the United States was modernized by employing the same techniques and strategies that transformed the manufacturing sector from a system of craft production to one of mass production. Viewing agriculture as just another industrial sector led to transformations in both the production and the processing of food. As small farmers and food processors were forced to expand, merge with larger operations, or go out of business, they became increasingly disconnected from the surrounding communities. Lyson enumerates the shortcomings of the current agriculture and food systems as they relate to social, economic, and environmental sustainability. He then introduces the concept of community problem solving and offers empirical evidence and concrete examples to show that a re-localization of the food production system is underway.