Gita Piramal and Margaret Laniak Herdeck

This study of thirteen of India's leading industrial families pays particular attention to the key decisions, cultural traditions, and personality issues that have contributed to their success. Based on interviews with scholars, journalists, government officials, and the business leaders themselves, the book covers each family business from its founding through its expansion into a large-scale,  More >

Kateryna Pishchikova

Considerable material and human resources are devoted to building democratic institutions around the world. Why, then, do assistance programs fail to meet their proclaimed goals? And why aren't these programs changed or abandoned when they fail? Using US assistance to women's NGOs in postcommunist Ukraine as a case study, Kateryna Pishchikova shows why democracy promotion programs have a  More >

Daniel Plaatjies, editor

Making Institutions Work in South Africa places the structures and processes of institutionalization at the center of debates about democracy, state, and society in South Africa. As they explore the factors that facilitate, and those that impede, strong, well-functioning institutions, the contributors share three core assumptions: institutions are the pillars of a constitutional democracy; they  More >

Henry Pleasants, editor and translator

Hugo Wolf (1860-1903), the renowned composer of German lieder, left another legacy to musical world. His musical criticism, which first appeared in the Wiener Salonblatt from 1884 to 1887, is now available to the English-speaking world, complete with annotations by music critic and author Henry Pleasants.  More >

Mark Pogrebin, Paul B. Stretesky, and N. Prabha Unnithan

How are guns used and viewed by criminals? Where do criminals obtain guns? And how do laws make firearms more or less accessible? Confronting these contentious questions, Guns, Violence, and Criminal Behavior offers a comprehensive exploration of the social processes surrounding illegal firearm use and criminal behavior.  The authors draw on in-depth interviews with felons convicted of  More >

Guy Poitras

In the face of potent domestic and global forces, the U.S., Canada, and Mexico—the NA-3—have devised an enterprise that promises to draw them closer together in the twenty-first century. Inventing North America is an attempt to understand the NA-3's unique brand of regionalism within an increasingly globalized world. Poitras dissects the commonalities and differences among the  More >

Adamantia Pollis and Peter Schwab, editors

This original collection reflects nearly two decades of developments in human rights scholarship, revisiting the debate between universalists and cultural relativists and also engaging new notions of "third generation" rights. The book begins with an analytical framework that encompasses changing perspectives on human rights and informs the chapters that follow. The case studies then  More >

Elisabeth Porter

Can postconflict states achieve both peace and justice as they deal with a traumatic past? What role does reconciliation play in healing wounds, building trust, and rectifying injustices? This provocative book, incorporating the frameworks of both peace/conflict studies and transitional justice, explores the core challenges that war-torn states confront once the violence has ended. The book is  More >

Marsha Pripstein Posusney and Michele Penner Angrist, editors

Why do authoritarian regimes prevail in the Middle East, while successful democratic transitions are occurring elsewhere in the developing world? Authoritarianism in the Middle East addresses this question, focusing on the role of political institutions and the strategic choices made by both rulers and opposition challengers. The authors eschew cultural explanations, highlighting instead the  More >

George Ann Potter

In this era of economic globalization, the debt owed by the poorest countries allows the richest to have enormous influence over most Southern economies. George Ann Potter brings together a wide range of arguments and views to examine the effects of economic globalization on the lives of the poor majority in debtor countries, showing how the issue of debt can illuminate the process of the  More >