The autobiographical work “Fear of Failure” documents the life and times of James Aarons, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. It is a bold, uncensored look at the struggles of a young man looking for fulfillment in his profession and love in his life. Dr. Aarons pulls no punches and makes no excuses as he charmingly writes his way through his life’s journey. It is an effort that took great courage to write, and took even greater courage for his wife to permit him to do so. Most of all, ...

Just outside Ecuador's capital, a grand stone pillar marks the equator. It's called the Mitad del Mundo, the Middle of the World. By accident, it sits several hundred meters from the line it claims to mark. Tourists visit anyway.Like a lot of what reaches outsiders about Ecuador, the monument is a kind of agreed-upon fiction: convenient, photogenic, not quite true. The literature being written in the country today is something else altogether: stranger, mor...

This volume examines the school-to-prison pipeline, a concept that has received growing attention over the past 10–15 years in the United States. The “pipeline” refers to a number of interrelated concepts and activities that most often include the criminalization of students and student behavior, the police-like state found in many schools throughout the country, and the introduction of youth into the criminal justice system at an early age. The school-to-prison pipeline negatively and dis...