Providing an indispensable resource for undergraduate students, graduate students, and policymakers interested in the prescription drug abuse crisis in the United States, this book summarizes the current state of prescription drug abuse and its growth over the past 20 years.The Prescription Drug Problem analyzes the growth of the prescription drug abuse problem from 1994 to 2014 and includes comparisons to marijuana and hard drug use during the same period...

Understanding Victimology: An Active Learning Approach is the only textbook with extensive discussion of both online and offline victimization reinforced by group and individual learning activities. Our textbook offers instructors a variety of active learning exercises – in the book itself and in the authors’ ancillaries – that engage students in the material and shed light on the experiences of marginalized social groups. Through these activities, students become engaged with the...

Now a Major Motion Picture Starring Brad PittJackie Cogan is an enforcer for the mob. When a high-stakes card game is heisted by unknown hoodlums, Cogan is called in to “handle” the problem. Moving expertly and ruthlessly among a variety of criminal hacks, hangers-on, and bigger-time crooks—a classic cast of misfits animated by Higgins’s hilarious, cracklingly authentic dialogue—Cogan gets to the root of the problem and, with five consecutive shots from a Smith & W...

Jerry "Digger" Doherty is an ex-con and proprietor of a workingman's Boston bar, who supplements his income with the occasional "odd job," like stealing live checks and picking up hot goods. His brother’s a priest, his wife’s a nag, and he’s got a deadly appetite for martinis and gambling. But when the Digger looses eighteen grand in borrowed money on a trip to Vegas, he quickly finds himself in the sights of mob loneshark “the Greek,” who will have to make the Digger pay up one way or ano...

A fast-paced, witty and authentic novel that transports the reader into the exhilarating world of crime and chicanery that defines the life of Boston lawyer, Jerry Kennedy.Heretofore successful lawyer Jerry Kennedy, our classy yet sleazy protagonist, finds himself grasping at straws when his world begins to crumble around him. His accountant jailed, his wife giving him the silent treatment, his mentor and friend, Frank McDonald, curiously unresponsive, Jerry grapples with public sl...

For court clerk Ambrose Merrion, life was about people taking care of one another. For Danny Hilliard, politics was a matter of acquiring the power to make sure that society did just that. With Merrion shrewdly managing Hilliard’s campaigns as a rising politician, the two friends made an excellent team.But trouble starts brewing when Merrion unexpectedly inherits ill-gotten gains from a corrupt predecessor, enabling him to indulge with Danny in the finer luxuries. To Merrion’s dism...

Sizzling with betrayal and murder, Higgins' tale is sprinkled with earthy dialogue and savvy characters. When Sandra Nichols, the wife of a wealthy businessman, is found dead in a Massachusetts wetland, respected criminal defense attorney Jerry Kennedy sheds his reclusive life to become her children's legal guardian. He digs for evidence and turns up a missing clue that begins a domino effect-exposing the killer.

Beginning in 1946, a then eight-year-old George Higgins, accompanied by father and grandfather, began taking the long train ride out to Fenway Park to find some truth in immortals like Doerr, DiMaggio, York, and Williams, and later, Yastremski, Marty Barrett, and many more. This is a book about baseball and about the Boston Red Sox; but that is only part of the story. Beyond the games, the book turns on thoughts about family and continuity and, of course, the progress of the seasons. There...

A winding tale of suspicion and intrigue, George V. Higgins skillfully recounts the story of elusive Short Joey Mossi.When detective sergeant Harry Dell’Appa went into enforced exile in the Berkshires to put an end to an ill-fated office romance, he didn’t expect to be called back to Boston so soon. But desperate times … so the saying goes, and head detective Brian Dennison is keen for Short Joey Mossi, a suspected mob exterminator, to be arrested once and for all. Dell’Appa is cal...

The classic novel from "America's best crime novelist" (Time)George V. Higgins's seminal crime novel is a down-and-dirty tale of thieves, mobsters, and cops on the mean streets of Boston. When small-time gunrunner Eddie Coyle is convicted on a felony, he's looking at three years in the pen—that is, unless he sells out one of his big-fish clientsto the DA. But which of the many hoods, gunmen, and executioners whom he calls his friends should he send up the river? Told almost ...

George Hamilton was the surgeon assigned to the frigate Pandora. The British Admiralty ordered the ship to the Pacific to arrest the Bounty mutineers and bring them back to England for trial. The commander, Captain Edward Edwards, also was ordered to chart the passage between Australia and New Guinea. While Edwards managed to arrest the mutineers still on Tahiti, he sank the Pandora on a reef near Australia. Hamilton tells this story and also the story of the crew's fate after the Pandora ...

As a nation, we spend more than $1 billion a year on federally mandated educational tests that 30 million students must take each year. The country spends an additional $1.2 billion on test preparation materials designed to help students pass these tests. While test mandates were put in place with good intentions, increasingly educational leaders and policy makers are questioning these test based reform efforts. Some question whether these programs are doing more harm than good. Others cal...