Featuring insights from influential figures like Pope Francis and Albert Gore alongside contributions from over thirty esteemed authors, Climate Chaos: Killing People, Places and the Planet charts a transformative path from despair to optimism. Grounded in rigorous scientific research, the book unflinchingly exposes the links between industries such as coal, fossil fuels, chemical factories, liquor, tobacco, and others, and their role in accelerating global warming and mass displa...

Political profiles of five mayors and their lasting impact on the cityChicago’s transformation into a global city began at City Hall. Dick Simpson and Betty O’Shaughnessy edit in-depth analyses of the five mayors that guided the city through this transition beginning with Harold Washington’s 1983 election: Washington, Eugene Sawyer, Richard M. Daley, Rahm Emmanuel, and Lori Lightfoot. Though the respected political science, sociologist, and journalist contributors ...

This edited volume reveals how a permanent war economy has made the United States unable to spread democracy abroad and has worsened domestic problems. The editors draw from classical readings in political theory, from primary documents (including key court decisions), and from social science research to analyze such issues as the effect of militarization and combativeness on the everyday lives of Americans. The editors also address the dire connection among banking losses, the housing rec...

The federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 was passed in a time of turmoil, conflict, and often conflagration in cities across the nation. It took the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to finally secure its passage. The Kerner Commission warned in 1968 that "to continue present policies is to make permanent the division of our country into two societies; one largely Negro and poor, located in the central cities; the other, predominantly white and affluent, located in the suburbs and o...

This book informs a renewed movement for fair lending and fair housing. Leading advocates and specialists examine strategic initiatives to realize objectives of the federal Fair Housing Act as well as state and local lawsWell-known fair housing and fair lending activists and organizers examine the implications of the new wave of fair housing activism generated by Occupy Wall Street protests and the many successes achieved in fair housing and fair lending over the y...

Meltdown reveals how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was able to curb unsafe and unfair practices that led to the 2008 financial crisis. In interviews with key government, industry, and advocacy groups along with deep archival research, Kirsch and Squires show where the CFPB was able to overcome many abusive practices, where it was less able to do so, and why.Open for business in 2011, the CFPB was Congress's response to the financial catastrophe ...

Economic development requires secure contract enforcement and stable property rights. Normal majority-rule politics, such as bargaining over distributive and monetary policies, generate instability and frequently undermine economic development. Above Politics argues that bureaucracies can contribute to stability and economic development, but only if they are insulated from unstable politics. A separation-of-powers stalemate creates the conditions for bureaucratic autonomy. But what keeps d...

A legendary figure in the realms of public policy and academia, John Gilderbloom is one of the foremost urban-planning researchers of our time, producing groundbreaking studies on housing markets, design, location, regulation, financing, and community building. Now, in Invisible City, he turns his eye to fundamental questions regarding housing for the elderly, the disabled, and the poor. Why is it that some locales can offer affordable, accessible, and attractive housing, while the large m...

This is the first scholarly analysis that examines the development and achievements of the American community development movement. Community development is now a multi-billion industry in the US. Hundreds of Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), located in all regions of the country, have successfully forged locally-based strategies that provide affordable housing, foster business development, and provide much needed community facilities, including innumerable charter scho...

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERA powerful and persuasive discussion about economics, freedom, and the relationship between the two, from today's brightest economist.In this classic discussion, Milton and Rose Friedman explain how our freedom has been eroded and our affluence undermined through the explosion of laws, regulations, agencies, and spending in Washington. This important analysis reveals what has gone wrong in America in the past and what is necessary for ...

For the past three decades, America has steadily become a nation of haves and have-nots. Our incomes are increasingly unequal. This steady growing apart is often mentioned as a troubling indicator by scholars and policy analysts, though seldom addressed by politicians. What economics Nobelist Paul Krugman terms "the Great Divergence" has till now been treated as little more than a talking point, a rhetorical club to be wielded in ideological battles. But this Great Divergence may be the mo...

In spite of its key role in creating the ruinous financial crisis of 2008, the American banking industry has grown bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever. Anchored by six megabanks whose assets amount to more than 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, this oligarchy proved it could first hold the global economy hostage and then use its political muscle to fight off meaningful reform. 13 Bankers brilliantly charts the rise to power of the ...