When John Costello was hired as the new Director of Public Works for the small island town of Brigantine, NJ, he was expected to maintain the status quo and enjoy the ride at taxpayers' expense. Costello instead began an earnest effort to clean up the city, which resulted in an immaculate town filled with delighted residents.Unfortunately, in the process, Costello also uncovered widespread corruption and abuse among Brigantine's elected officials and municipal employees. Corruption...

The often bloody struggles of Central America have dominated news reports for a long time. Behind the headlines lies an enormous population of the desperately poor, and it is axiomatic that they are rendered even more powerless by widespread illiteracy.What actually counts as literacy is less clear. Archer and Costello describe some of the most exciting and innovative programmes designed to overcome the problem and how, as they worked with many of them, they discovered how varied an...

This book is for people who understand that carbon emissions are driving the dangerous phenomenon of global warming and wish to do their part in mitigating this risk by lowering the carbon footprint of their investments - without sacrificing investment performance.The most important new trend in investing today goes by the acronym E-S-G, which involves evaluating a company’s investment potential by scrutinizing its Environmental, Social and Governance practices.Within ESG s...

The Brazil-United States relations represent a huge potential, but in recent decades have suffered from lack of communication and understanding between academics and policymakers from both countries. This book goes a long way towards demystifyingthis relationship. Covering from the final decades of the 19th century until the period of the Rousseff and Obama administrations,the work apprehends the political, economic and diplomatic contexts that define the present day.

Janice Perlman wrote the first in-depth account of life in the favelas, a book hailed as one of the most important works in global urban studies in the last 30 years. Now, in Favela, Perlman carries that story forward to the present. Re-interviewing many longtime favela residents whom she had first met in 1969--as well as their children and grandchildren--Perlman offers the only long-term perspective available on the favelados as they struggle for a better life. Perlman discovers ...

Some find talking to others uncomfortable, difficult, or intimidating. Here is a way to overcome these communication challenges. HOW TO TALK TO ANYONE, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE is the key to building confidence and improving communication skills. Written by Larry King, this guide provides simple and practical advice to help make communication easier, more successful, and even more enjoyable. Anecdotes from a life spent talking--on television, radio, and in person,--add to the fun and value of the...

Is a native-born tour guide who has sex with tourists—in exchange for dinner or gifts or cash—merely a prostitute or gigolo? What if the tourist continues to send gifts or money to the tour guide after returning home? As this original and provocative book demonstrates, when it comes to sex—and the effects of capitalism and globalization—nothing is as simple as it might seem.Based on ten years of research, Economies of Desire is the first ethnographic study to examine the e...

In 1976, with the US trade embargo against Cuba underway, Canada's Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau visited the island nation, befriended his counterpart, and exclaimed publicly "Long live Prime Minister Fidel Castro!" During the past half-century of communist rule in Cuba, Canada's policy of engagement with the country has contrasted sharply with the United States' policy of isolation. Based on a series of interviews conducted in Havana, Washington, and Ottawa, Perceptions of Cub...

Drawn from Katharine Graham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir Personal History, a dramatic account of how she piloted the Washington Post through the Pentagon Papers and Watergate crises.After inheriting the Post from her father, and assuming its leadership in 1963 after the death of her husband, Graham found herself unexpectedly playing a role in history. Here she recounts the riveting episodes that transformed a shy widow into a newspaper legend, as she d...

Combining anthropological methods and theories with political philosophy, Sian Lazar analyzes everyday practices and experiences of citizenship in a satellite city to the Bolivian capital of La Paz: El Alto, where more than three-quarters of the population identify as indigenous Aymara. For several years, El Alto has been at the heart of resistance to neoliberal market reforms, such as the export of natural resources and the privatization of public water systems. In October 2003, protests ...

The shocking truth behind the death of an American icon—and the conspiracies that kept it secret for decades—in “the best autopsy of Marilyn Monroe” (Cyril H. Wecht, MD, JD)In her tragically short life, Marilyn Monroe embodied American womanhood, innocence, and lust—both as a Hollywood star and in the shadows of her tormented soul.But when she was found naked and dead on the morning of August 5, 1962, she became the subject of a mystery that has perplexed t...

Faces of Latin America has sold more than 50,000 copies since it first appeared in 1991, and is widely considered to be the best available introduction in English to the economies, politics, demography, social structures, environment and cultures of Latin America. Duncan Green and Sue Branford take the reader beyond the conventional media’s fixation on the drug trade, corrupt politicians and military leaders, death squads, and guerrilla movements to celebrate the vibrant history and cultur...