The establishment of the African Union and its African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) in 2002 marked a fundamental transformation in how African states collectively address security challenges. This book examines the origins, institutional design, and early performance of APSA, revealing the political dynamics that shaped this landmark initiative in regional security governance.Drawing on extensive elite interviews with key decision-makers, such as former Nigerian President...

Contaminated drinking water killed thousands of Chicago's original citizens, so the city took the unprecedented step of digging a tunnel two miles long and 30 feet below lake bottom. Since the facilities on shore included an unsightly 138-foot vertical pipe, famed architect William Boyington concealed it with a limestone, castle-like tower that soon became a celebrated landmark. Through the first 150 years of its existence, Chicago's iconic Water Tower has survived the Great Fire-the only ...

This compelling history chronicles some of the most intense and tragic fires in Chicago's storied meatpacking district.Chicago's Union Stock Yards made the city "the hog butcher of the world," but the notoriety came at a grievous cost. From their opening on Christmas Day of 1865 to their final closure in July of 1971, The Yards were the site of nearly three hundred extra-alarm fires. That infamous history includes some of the most disastrous conflagrations of a cit...

Harrowing experiences and shocking details regarding the societal phenomenon known as, Racial Profiling fill the pages of this true story based on the life of New Jersey State Trooper John Hogan. Following his involvement in the infamous, Turnpike Shooting which ignited the nations firestorm regarding the issue of racial profiling, observe a first hand look at how New Jerseys politicians, not the facts of the case, influenced the outcome of this tragedy. Turnpike Trooper is an emotional de...

Chicago's Motor Row earned a spot in the National Register of Historic Places by pioneering a new way to market an invention that was remaking America--the automobile. From approximately 1905 to 1936, well over 100 makes of car were offered by dealers in the 28-acre district. Motor Row started when Henry Ford, the best known name in automobile manufacturing, opened one of his first dealerships outside Detroit on South Michigan Avenue near the homes of Chicago's most affluent citizens. Othe...

This accessible and stirring book not only introduces readers to the work of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), the domestic antipoverty and social justice program sponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, but also inspires us to service. With John P. Hogan as our guide, we are invited to walk with those who serve and those who are served in confronting the daily reality of poverty as well as the root causes and structures that cause it. Written with t...

The Ogden Gas Affair represented the biggest political scandal of Chicago's first sixty years. Mayor John P. Hopkins and Democratic Party boss Roger Sullivan conspired with ten other insiders to form a dummy corporation to blackmail Peoples Gas Company. The scam poured money into the coffers of beneficiaries who were never prosecuted, including the governor of Illinois, John P. Altgeld. As their lengthy swindle ran its course, Hopkins and Sullivan rubbed elbows with the most notorious graf...

John T. Hogan’s The Tragedy of the Athenian Ideal in Thucydides and Plato assesses the roles of Pericles, Alcibiades, and Nicias in Athens’ defeat in Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War. Comparing Thucydides’ presentation of political leadership with ideas in Plato’s Statesman as well as Laches, Charmides, Meno, Symposium, Republic, Phaedo, Sophist, and Laws, it concludes that Plato and Thucydides reveal Pericles as lacking the political discipline (sophrosune) to plan a successful war against S...

How to Steal a Whole Life Insurance Policy via Forgery and TheftWhat happens when an ordinary citizen takes on a powerful insurance company and refuses to back down?HOGAN v. GUARDIAN is a gripping true legal story that follows one man's years-long battle to reclaim his whole life insurance policy after discovering what he believes were forged documents, unauthorized withdrawals, and a wrongful policy termination....

An "exhaustive" account of the pivotal incident between "native-born Protestant Chicagoans who founded the city and newer German and Irish immigrants" ( Bloomberg).In 1855, when Chicago's recently elected mayor Levi Boone pushed through a law forbidding the sale of alcohol on Sunday, the city pushed back. To the German community, the move seemed a deliberate provocation from Boone's stridently anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party. Beer formed the centerpiece ...

“The Lord loves a cheerful giver.”Being generous makes us feel good. It is a human act, which reveals that most noble part of our nature. It is also divine. When we are generous we are imitating the One who has been most generous with us.Using examples from the lives of the saints, this title reveals how generosity is given to us so that we are able to fulfil Christ’s command to love God with all our heart, all our mind and all our strength, and to love our neighbour as our...

Veneration of martyrs is one of the earliest devotions in the Church. For centuries Christians looked upon the martyrs as the great heroes of the faith, offering the supreme testimony to Christ and the Gospel by laying down their lives rather than renounce their Christian faith.A Book of Martyrs is intended to remind the faithful of some of these powerful men and women who lived and suffered in the British Isles. Among the many Saints and Blesseds of England, Scotland and Wales are...