Books

As recently as the 1880s, most American cities had no effective means of collecting and removing the mountains of garbage, refuse, and manure-over a thousand tons a day in New York City alone-that clogged streets and overwhelmed the senses of residents. In his landmark study, Garbage in the Cities, Martin ...

After the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, more than a dozen countries undertook aggressive privatization programs. Proponents of economic reform championed such large-scale efforts as the fastest, most reliable way to make the transition from a state-run to a capitalist economy. The idea was widely ...

In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the global political economy has undergone a profound transformation. Democracy has swept the globe, and both rich and developing nations must compete in an increasingly integrated world economy.How are social welfare policies being affected by this wave of economic globalization? Leading ...

This volume focuses on women in Latin America as stakeholders in water resources management. It makes their contributions to grassroots efforts more visible, explains why doing so is essential for effective public policy and planning in the water sector, and provides guidelines for future planning and project implementation. After an ...

The United States and Cuba share a complex, fractious, interconnected history. Before 1959, the United States was the island nation's largest trading partner. But in swift reaction to Cuba's communist revolution, the United States severed all economic ties between the two nations, initiating the longest trade embargo in modern ...

Silver Winner, ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year, HistoryFrom September 1941 until January 1944, Leningrad suffered under one of the worst sieges in the history of warfare. At least one million civilians died, many during the terribly cold first winter. Bearing the brunt of this hardship—and keeping the city alive through ...

Winter is the season that most tests our mettle. There are the obvious challenges of the weather-freezing rain, wind chill, deep snow, dangerous ice-but also the psychological burdens of waiting for spring and the enduring often false starts that accompany its eventual return. On the surface, perhaps, winter might seem ...

In Elegy on Toy Piano, Dean Young's sixth book of poems, elegiac necessity finds itself next to goofy celebration. Daffy Duck enters the Valley of the Eternals. Faulkner and bell-bottoms cling to beauty's evanescence. Even in single poems, Young's tone and style vary. No one feeling or ...

The first issue of the Pittsburgh Gazette was published on Saturday, August 12, 1786. Nearly 220 years later, it lives on as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the dominant paper in a major U.S. city: survivor of name changes, ownership sales, numerous mergers, and a competitive landscape once populated by more than fifty newspapers. ...

Denise Duhamel's much anticipated new collection begins with a revisionist tale–Noah is married to Joan of Arc–in a poem about America's often flawed sense of history. Throughout Two and Two, doubles abound: Noah's animals; Duhamel's parents as Jack and Jill in a near-fatal accident; ...

Epistemic logic is the branch of philosophical thought that seeks to formalize the discourse about knowledge. Its object is to articulate and clarify the general principles of reasoning about claims to and attributions of knowledge. This comprehensive survey of the topic offers the first systematic account of the subject as ...

Named U.S. Poet Laureate for 2004-2006, Ted Kooser is one of America's masters of the short metaphorical poem. Dana Gioia has remarked that Kooser has written more perfect poems than any poet of his generation. In Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985, Kooser has selected poems from two of ...

Alicia Suskin Ostriker's voice has long been acknowledged as a major force in American poetry. In No Heaven, her eleventh collection, she takes a hint from John Lennon's “Imagine” to wrestle with the world as it is: “no hell below us, / above us only sky.” It is a ...

Ninety miles separate Cuba and Key West, Florida. Crossing that distance, thousands of Cubans have lost their lives. For Cuban American poet Virgil Suárez, that expanse of ocean represents the state of exile, which he has imaginatively bridged in over two decades of compelling poetry. “Whatever isn't voiced ...

An examination of philosophical realism from the standpoint of pragmatic epistemology, Realism and Pragmatic Epistemology addresses the core idea of Rescher’s work in epistemology: that functional and pragmatic concerns exert a controlling influence on the conduct of rational inquiry and on the ways in which we can and should ...