What role do the media play in influencing political life and shaping public opinion and behavior? Do they support—or undermine—our democratic beliefs and institutions? Claims about the media’s powerful influence are frequently made, but where is the evidence? Kenneth Newton scrutinizes these complex questions. Recognizing that differing forms of political communication have    More >

In Surrogates of the State Jennings explores the delicate relationship between development NGOs and the states they work in using his exhaustive and illuminating case study of Tanzania in the 1960s and 70s.  During that time Tanzania instituted the rural socialist Ujamaa program, resulting in the forced resettlement of 6 million people to villages, transforming the map of the country. Rather    More >

An anthology includes nine previously unpublished studies and reviews that evaluate the uses of closed-circuit television (CCTV) and improvements to street lighting to help prevent crime in public spaces in the U.K. and elsewhere.    More >

What can researchers glean from national crime surveys? And how must these research tools evolve to remain relevant? Addressing these questions, the authors highlight key findings of the British Crime Survey and the US National Crime Victimization Survey and outline innovations necessary for their continued usefulness.    More >

Jessica Pardee documents and examines the experiences of low-income African American women during Hurricane Katrina to uncover the ways that race, class, and gender shape the experiences of disasters. Drawing on intimate interviews to explore the complex challenges that these women faced in the course of the hurricane and its aftermath, Pardee reveals how, with so few material resources, they    More >

Egypt's agricultural development has been constrained by, among other factors, the need to conserve scarce natural resources, the pressures of rapid urbanization, the onslaught of the desert, and, not least important, technological limitations and restrictive economic structures. This book addresses the issues crucial to achieving and maintaining sustainable agriculture in Egypt.    More >

John Ikerd's Sustainable Capitalism is both a penetrating critique of capitalism and a powerful argument for its vast and untapped potential for maximizing human welfare.    More >

Kristin Helmore and Naresh Singh present the details of the widely tested Participatory Assessment and Planning for Sustainable Livelihoods methodology, or PAPSL, a holistic approach to poverty eradication that empowers the poor to analyze their circumstances, identify their priorities, and launch their own development initiatives.    More >

The tranquility of the European Union's transition to the euro in 1999 contrasted dramatically with the preceding tumultuous decades of exchange rate crises and political upheavals. But have the EU member states in fact converged sufficiently to make monetary union a stable alternative? Or is EMU an institutional lid on a simmering pot of diverse economies, in which tensions are building to a    More >

This new edition of Tabloid Justice reveals that, although the media focus on high-profile criminal trials is thought by many to have diminished in the years since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the polarized, partisan coverage of these trials has in fact continued unabated. The authors investigate the profoundly negative impact of the media's coverage of the criminal justice    More >