Exploring the contradictory nature of Mexican statehood, Erfani explains how a weak national state became a symbol of great domestic strength and, although failing in its domestic economic endeavors, supported a long and stable political regime. Erfani focuses on the concept of sovereignty as not only a legal status, but also a political myth. She traces the struggles of Mexico's federal    More >

Winner of the Midwest Sociological Society Distinguished Book Award, 2013! Is a teenage violent offender a dangerous predator—or a vulnerable innocent that we should rescue from a life of crime? J. William Spencer probes our ambivalent response to youth violence to show how deeply entwined issues of crime, age, race, and class distort our understanding of an important social    More >

In 1939, the German army shocked and terrorized the world with Blitzkrieg, its form of mobilized warfare. How the Germans rebuilt their army after defeat in World War I—circumventing the prohibitions of the treaty at Versailles—is one of the major questions in military history. Citino shows that German officers of the army of the Weimar Republic (the Reichswehr), men like General Hans    More >

The Pedagogy of the Earth is a rare collection of ideas and information by some of the finest scientists, development practitioners, public intellectuals, poets, and philosophers around the world and through the ages—gathered by the editors to enrich those who are endeavoring to build a sustainable and equitable future. The book includes work by Ray Bradbury, Rachel Carson, Daniel D.    More >

This seminal book was inspired by a series of questions: What explains the endurance of Augusto Pinochet's authoritarian regime in Chile, a country with a lengthy democratic tradition? What mechanisms secured the regime's political stability and broad-based support? What role did neoliberal ideas play in authoritarian discourse and policy? How could two such opposite forces as political    More >

In a challenging new interpretation of Jewish immigrant history, Nancy L. Green traces the westward movement of East European Jews to France during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and explores their experiences as immigrant workers. By 1914 some 40,000 East European Jews had settled in France, many of them in Paris's Marais district, known in Yiddish as the Pletzl, or    More >

Once impassable and inhospitable, both the Arctic region and Antarctica are rapidly emerging as geopolitically strategic hot spots. As Ryan Burke writes in The Polar Pivot, the ice is melting and the tensions rising. In this new environment, what are the stakes? Why are Russia and China racing to increase their military capabilities and infrastructures in the polar regions? What is the United    More >

Frustrated efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan give urgency to the question of how to craft effective, humane, and legitimate security institutions in conflict-ridden states—and whether legitimate policing can in fact be developed in the midst of insurgency and terrorism. David H. Bayley and Robert M. Perito confront these questions head on. Against the backdrop of failed US attempts to    More >

Spanning the period from the country’s independence in 1822 through mid-2016, Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira assesses the trajectory of Brazil's political, social, and economic development. Bresser-Pereira draws on his decades of first-hand experience to shed light on the many paradoxes that have characterized Brazil's polity, its society, and the relations between the two across nearly    More >

Globalization, suggest the authors of this collection, is creating new opportunities—some legal, some illicit—for armed factions to pursue their agendas in civil war. Within this context, they analyze the key dynamics of war economies and the challenges posed for conflict resolution and sustainable peace. Thematic chapters consider key issues in the political economy of internal wars,    More >