Author: Percival Everett File Type: epub A baffling triptych of murder mysteries by the author of I Am Not Sidney Poitier ** Ogden Walker, deputy sheriff of a small New Mexico town, is on the trail of an old womans murderer. But at the crime scene, his are the only footprints leading up to and away from her door. Something is amiss, and even his mother knows it. As other cases pile up, Ogden gives chase, pursuing flimsy leads for even flimsier reasons. His hunt leads him from the seamier side of Denver to a hippie commune as he seeks the puzzling solution. In Assumption, his follow-up to the wickedly funny I Am Not Sidney Poitier, Percival Everett is in top form as he once again upends our expectations about characters, plot, race, and meaning. A wild ride to the heart of a baffling mystery, Assumption is a literary thriller like no other. **

Author: Sarah K. Cotton File Type: pdf The use of armed private security contractors (PSCs) in the Iraq war has been unprecedented. Not only government agencies but also journalists, reconstruction contractors, and nongovernmental organizations frequently view them as a logical choice to filltheir security needs, yet there have been a number of reports of PSCs committing serious, and sometimes fatal, abuses of power in Iraq. This study uses a systematic, empirically based survey of opinions of U.S. military and State Department personnel on the ground in Iraq to shed light on the following questions To what extent are armed PSCs perceived to be imposing costs on the U.S. military effort? If so, are those costs tempered by positive contributions? How has the use of PSCs affected U.S. military operations in Operation Iraqi Freedom? While the military personnel did report some incidents of unnecessarily threatening, arrogant, or belligerent contractor behavior, the survey results indicate that neither the U.S. military nor State Department personnel appear to perceive PSCs to be running wild in Iraq. Moreover, respondents tended to consider PSCs a force multiplier rather than an additional strain on military troops, but both military and State Department respondents held mixed views regarding the contribution of armed contractors to U.S. foreign policy objectives.

Author: Milton Vasil Anastos File Type: pdf

Author: Tracy Neumann File Type: pdf Cities in the North Atlantic coal and steel belt embodied industrial power in the early twentieth century, but by the 1970s, their economic and political might had been significantly diminished by newly industrializing regions in the Global South. This was not simply a North American phenomenonthe precipitous decline of mature steel centers like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Hamilton, Ontario, was a bellwether for similar cities around the world. Contemporary narratives of the decline of basic industry on both sides of the Atlantic make the postindustrial transformation of old manufacturing centers seem inevitable, the product of natural business cycles and neutral market forces. In Remaking the Rust Belt, Tracy Neumann tells a different story, one in which local political and business elites, drawing on a limited set of internationally circulating redevelopment models, pursued postindustrial urban visions. They hired the same consulting firms shared ideas about urban revitalization on study tours, at conferences, and in the pages of professional journals and began to plan cities oriented around services rather than manufacturingall well in advance of the economic malaise of the 1970s. While postindustrialism remade cities, it came with high costs. In following this strategy, public officials sacrificed the well-being of large portions of their populations. Remaking the Rust Belt recounts how local leaders throughout the Rust Belt created the jobs, services, leisure activities, and cultural institutions that they believed would attract younger, educated, middle-class professionals. In the process, they abandoned social democratic goals and widened and deepened economic inequality among urban residents. **