America’s drug laws have always exerted an unequal and unfair toll on Blacks and Latinos, who are arrested more often than Whites for the possession of illegal drugs and given harsher sentences. In this volume, contributors ask how would marijuana legalization affect communities of color? Is legalization of marijuana necessary to safeguard minority families from a lifetime of hardship and inequality? Who in minority communities favors legalization and why, and do these minority opinions di...

The Beginner’s Guide to Engineering series is designed to provide a very simple, non-technical introduction to the fields of engineering for people with no experience in the fields.Each book in the series focuses on introducing the reader to the various concepts in the fields of engineering conceptually rather than mathematically.These books are a great resource for high school students that are considering majoring in one of the engineering fields, or for anyone ...

What ho! A new Jeeves and Wooster novel that is "impossible to read without grinning idiotically" (Evening Standard), penned in homage to P.G. Wodehouse by bestselling author Ben Schott -- in which literature's favorite master and servant become spies for the English Crown.The misadventures of Bertie Wooster and his incomparable personal gentleman, Jeeves, have delighted audiences for nearly a century. Now bestselling author Ben Schott brings this odd couple back t...

Quirky comedy from the writer of Married, following the highs and lows of a local government officerMartin Christmas is a local government worker in the Sanitation department, whose days are shaped by endless recycling initiatives and green league tables, and whose nights are shadowed by his failed relationships and curmudgeonly interior monologues.While Martin is trying to cultivate his inner peace, but things keep getting in his way: having to com...

What is America? Is it a hegemonic superpower, composed of ruthlessly selfish capitalists? Or is it a land of hope and glory, a shelter for the huddled masses, and a beacon of freedom and enlightenment? The definition of this complex nation has been debated substantially, yet all seem to agree on one thing: it is unique. The idea of an exceptional America can be traced all the way back to Alexis de Tocqueville's nineteenth-century observations of a newly formed democracy that seemed determ...

Across America today gated communities sprawl out from urban centers, employers enforce mandatory drug testing, and schools screen students with metal detectors. Social problems ranging from welfare dependency to educational inequality have been reconceptualized as crimes, with an attendant focus on assigning fault and imposing consequences. Even before the recent terrorist attacks, non-citizen residents had become subject to an increasingly harsh regime of detention and deportation, and p...

This volume argues that international human rights law has made a positive contribution to the realization of human rights in much of the world. Although governments sometimes ratify human rights treaties, gambling that they will experience little pressure to comply with them, this is not typically the case. Focusing on rights stakeholders rather than the United Nations or state pressure, Beth Simmons demonstrates through a combination of statistical analyses and case studies that the rati...

According to Statistics Canada, all crime rates -- including violent crime -- have been trending downward over the last twenty years. Yet the Harper government continues to insist Canadians are in the midst of a crime epidemic. This is their rationale for spending billions on new prisons, and for legislation that will put thousands more behind bars and increase the likelihood that young Canadians will have criminal records.In this book, author Paula Mallea lays out the evidence tha...

Politicians and the political process, even in ostensibly democratic countries, can be deadly. James Gilligan has discovered a devastating truth that has been "hiding in plain sight" for the past century - namely, that when America's conservative party, the Republicans, have gained the presidency, the country has repeatedly suffered from epidemics of violent death. Rates of both suicide and homicide have sky-rocketed. The reasons are all too obvious: rates of every form of social and econo...

A call to replace Canada’s incarceration model, which has proven destructive, discriminatory, expensive, counterproductive, and — most of all — unnecessary.Imprisonment developed in the Western world as the punishment to suit all offences, from violent assault to victimless drug use. Centuries ago, incarcerating convicts represented progress on society’s part, since it came as a replacement for capital punishment, maiming, and torture.Our current model — ta...

In a series of newly commissioned essays from the leading scholars and advocates in criminal justice, Invisible Punishment explores, for the first time, the far-reaching consequences of our current criminal justice policies. Adopted as part of “get tough on crime” attitudes that prevailed in the 1980s and '90s, a range of strategies, from “three strikes” and “a war on drugs,” to mandatory sentencing and prison privatization, have resulted in the mass incarceration of American citi...

Pain touches sensitive nerves in American liberalism, conservatism, and political life.People in chronic pain have always sought relief—and have always been judged—but who decides whether someone is truly in pain? In this history of American political culture, Keith Wailoo examines how pain and compassionate relief define a line between society's liberal trends and conservative tendencies. Tracing the development of pain theories in politics, medicine, law, and soc...