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  Imagining Urban Futures - Cities...

  Carl Abbott

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  What science fiction can teach us about urban planning Carl Abbott, who has taught urban studies and urban planning in five decades, brings together urban studies and literary studies to examine how fictional cities in work by authors as different as E. M. Forster, Isaac Asimov, Kim Stanley Robinson, and China Miéville might help us to envision an urban future that is viable and resilient. Imagining Urban Futures is a remarkable treatise on what is best and strongest in urban theory and practice today, as refracted and intensely imagined in science fiction. As the human population grows, we can envision an increasingly urban society. Shifting weather patterns, rising sea levels, reduced access to resources, and a host of other issues will radically impact urban environments, while technology holds out the dream of cities beyond Earth. Abbott delivers a compelling critical discussion of science fiction cities found in literary works, television programs, and films of many eras from Metropolis to Blade Runner and Soylent Green to The Hunger Games, among many others.

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  Howard Zinn Speaks - Collected...

  Howard Zinn

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  A wide-ranging collection of speeches—many published here for the first time—by the historian and author of A People’s History of the United States.   Howard Zinn has illuminated our history like no other US historian. This collection of his speeches on protest movements, racism, war, and American history covers more than four decades of his active engagement with the audiences he inspired with his humor, insight, and clarity.   This volume features Zinn’s impassioned and erudite statements on the war in Vietnam, abolishing the death penalty, the legacy of Emma Goldman, the myth of American exceptionalism, the Obama Administration, and much more.   “Reading Howard’s spoken words, I feel that I am almost hearing his voice again—his stunning pitch-perfect ability to capture the moment and the concerns and needs of the audience, whoever they may be, always enlightening, often stirring, an amalgam of insight, critical history, wit, blended with charm and appeal.” —Noam Chomsky, leading public intellectual and author of Hopes and Prospects   “With ferocious moral clarity and mischievous humor, Howard turned routine antiwar rallies into profound explorations of state violence and staid academic conferences into revival meetings for social change.” —Naomi Klein, author of No Is Not Enough and The Battle For Paradise

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  How to Be a Parliamentary...

  Robert Dale

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  To some, they are the graduates grasping the first rung on the ladder to power, to others, the unsung heroes of the British parliamentary system. But whether your notion of parliamentary researchers is more The Thick of It than The West Wing, more Yes Minister than House of Cards, there is no doubt that these individuals play an essential role in keeping the giant (and, let's be honest, slightly creaky) machine that drives British politics from juddering to a halt. Branded bag-carriers while actually performing vital duties like drafting speeches and Parliamentary Questions, handling the media and engaging with constituents online, parliamentary researchers do the dirty work behind the scenes, allowing their bosses to focus on their main job - performing. With the help of case studies and guest writers, Robert Dale, himself a former parliamentary researcher, tells the fascinating story of how the MP's office has developed over recent decades, and combines practical advice with acute personal observations on how to get ahead as a researcher. If you're a graduate looking to take your first step into politics, or simply interested in the job around a third of our current Cabinet had before becoming an MP, How to Be a Parliamentary Researcher offers a compelling insight into how the British political system really operates.

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  The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth

  Michael Mandelbaum

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  In the 25 years after 1989, the world enjoyed the deepest peace in history. In The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth, the eminent foreign policy scholar Michael Mandelbaum examines that remarkable quarter century, describing how and why the peace was established and then fell apart. To be sure, wars took place in this era, but less frequently and on a far smaller scale than in previous periods. Mandelbaum argues that the widespread peace ended because three major countries - Vladimir Putin's Russia in Europe, Xi Jinping's China in East Asia, and the Shia clerics' Iran in the Middle East - put an end to it with aggressive nationalist policies aimed at overturning the prevailing political arrangements in their respective regions. The three had a common motive: Their need to survive in a democratic age with their countries' prospects for economic growth uncertain.
   
  Mandelbaum further argues that the key to the return of peace lies in the advent of genuine democracy, including free elections and the protection of religious, economic, and political liberty. Yet, since recent history has shown that democracy cannot be imposed from the outside, The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth has a dual message: while the world has a formula for peace, there is no way to ensure that all countries will embrace it.

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  In The Dark

  James Whitcomb Riley

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  James Whitcomb Riley was an American writer, poet, and best-selling author. During his lifetime he was known as the "Hoosier Poet" and "Children's Poet" for his dialect works and his children's poetry respectively. His poems tended to be humorous or sentimental, and of the approximately one thousand poems that Riley authored, the majority are in dialect. Riley began his career writing verses as a sign maker and submitting poetry to newspapers. Thanks in part to an endorsement from poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, he eventually earned successive jobs at Indiana newspaper publishers during the latter 1870s. Riley became a bestselling author in the 1890s. His children's poems were compiled into a book and illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy. Titled the Rhymes of Childhood, the book was his most popular and sold millions of copies. As a poet, Riley achieved an uncommon level of fame during his own lifetime.  - Summary by Wikipedia

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  The Underdog in American...

  Karl G. Trautman

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  One major party in American politics, the Democrats, has consciously identified itself with underdogs. This book analyzes the relationship between the party and the main political ideology of its base, which is liberalism. It also analyzes culture and the enduring appeal of underdogs as well as specific Democratic presidential candidates, their campaigns and their presidencies. These include Thomas Jefferson, FDR, JFK, Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, Howard Dean and Barack Obama.

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