In this book Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and co-author Raaj Sah address one of development's major issues. During the early phases of economic development, there are often serious conflicts between the interests of town and country. The Corn Law Debate in England, the economic conflictsbetween the North and the South prior to the US Civil War, and the Soviet Industrialization Debate are among the historical examples.Most of today's countries face town versus country tensions of increasing severity, including such issues as who should pay how much in taxes, who should get how much in subsidies, and what forms the taxes and subsidies should take. This volume analyses these tensions and issues, taking into accountthe great diversity of institutions and economic environments observed in different developing countries.While dealing primarily with today's developing countries, the book also sheds some new light on some of the historical controversies. Each chapter contains a non-technical statement of the problems at hand and a summary of the analysis. The book will be of interest to public finance economists, andpractitioners and researchers of economic development, as well as to economic historians.
Unlike many cities farther north, Kansas City, Missouri-along with its sister city in Kansas-had a significant African American population by the midnineteenth century and also served as a way station for those migrating north or west. "Take Up the Black Man's Burden" focuses on the people and institutions that shaped the city's black communities from the end of the Civil War until the outbreak of World War II, blending rich historical research with first-person accounts that allow participants in this historical drama to tell their own stories of struggle and accomplishment. Charles E. Coulter opens up the world of the African American community in its formative years, making creative use of such sources as census data, black newspapers, and Urban League records. His account covers social interaction, employment, cultural institutions, housing, and everyday lives within the context of Kansas City's overall development, placing a special emphasis on the years 1919 to 1939 to probe the harsh reality of the Depression for Kansas City blacks-a time when many of the community's major players also rose to prominence. "Take Up the Black Man's Burden" is a rich testament not only of high-profile individuals such as publisher Chester A. Franklin, activists Ida M. Becks and Josephine Silone Yates, and state legislator L. Amasa Knox but also of ordinary laborers in the stockyards, domestics in white homes, and railroad porters. It tells how various elements of the population worked together to build schools, churches, social clubs, hospitals, the Paseo YMCA/YWCA, and other institutions that made African American life richer. It also documents the place of jazz and baseball, for which the community was so well known, as well as movie houses, amusement parks, and other forms of leisure. While recognizing that segregation and discrimination shaped their reality, Coulter moves beyond race relations to emphasize the enabling aspects of African Americans' lives and show how people defined and created their world. As the first extensive treatment of black history in Kansas City, "Take Up the Black Man's Burden" is an exceptional account of minority achievement in America's crossroads. By showing how African Americans saw themselves in their own world, it gives readers a genuine feel for the richness of black life during the interwar years of the twentieth century.
'One of the hidden geniuses of the twentieth century' Colm Tóibín 'She suddenly leaned toward the mirror and sought the loveliest way to see herself' Lucrécia Neves is vain, unreflective, insolently superficial, almost mute. She may have no inner life at all. As she morphs from small-town girl to worldly wife of a rich man, and her small home town surrenders to the forces of progress, Lucrécia seeks perfection: to be an object, serene, smooth, beyond the burden of words or even thought itself. A book that obsessed its author, The Besieged City is unlike any other work in Lispector's canon: a story of transformation, of what it means to see and to be seen.
In cities around the world, planning and health experts are beginning to understand the role of social and environmental conditions that lead to trauma. By respecting the lived experience of those who were most impacted by harms, some cities have developed innovative solutions for urban trauma. In Cities for Life, public health expert Jason Corburn shares lessons from three of these cities: Richmond, California; Medellín, Colombia; and Nairobi, Kenya. Corburn draws from his work with citizens, activists, and decision-makers in these cities over a ten-year period, as individuals and communities worked to heal from trauma--including from gun violence, housing and food insecurity, poverty, and other harms. Cities for Life is about a new way forward with urban communities that rebuilds our social institutions, practices, and policies to be more focused on healing and health.
Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Priyanka Champaneri’s transcendent debut novel brings us inside India’s holy city of Banaras, where the manager of a death hostel shepherds the dying who seek the release of a good death, while his own past refuses to let him go. Banaras, Varanasi, Kashi: India’s holy city on the banks of the Ganges has many names but holds one ultimate promise for Hindus. It is the place where pilgrims come for a good death, to be released from the cycle of reincarnation by purifying fire. As the dutiful manager of a death hostel in Kashi, Pramesh welcomes the dying and assists families bound for the funeral pyres that burn constantly on the ghats. The soul is gone, the body is burnt, the time is past, he tells them. Detach. After ten years in the timeless city, Pramesh can nearly persuade himself that here, there is no past or future. He lives contentedly at the death hostel with his wife, Shobha, their young daughter, Rani, the hostel priests, his hapless but winning assistant, and the constant flow of families with their dying. But one day the past arrives in the lifeless form of a man pulled from the river—a man with an uncanny resemblance to Pramesh. Called “twins” in their childhood village, he and his cousin Sagar are inseparable until Pramesh leaves to see the outside world and Sagar stays to tend the land. After Pramesh marries Shobha, defying his family’s wishes, a rift opens up between the cousins that he has long since tried to forget. Do not look back. Detach. But for Shobha, Sagar’s reemergence casts a shadow over the life she’s built for her family. Soon, an unwelcome guest takes up residence in the death hostel, the dying mysteriously continue to live, and Pramesh is forced to confront his own ideas about death, rebirth, and redemption. Told in lush, vivid detail and with an unforgettable cast of characters, The City of Good Death is a remarkable debut novel of family and love, memory and ritual, and the ways in which we honor the living and the dead. PRAISE FOR THE CITY OF GOOD DEATH “In Champaneri’s ambitious, vivid debut, the dying come to the holy city of Kashi to die a good death that frees them from the burden of reincarnation…. In sharp prose, Champaneri explores the power of stories—those the characters tell themselves, those told about them, and those they believe. . . . This epic, magical story of death teems with life.” —Publishers Weekly “Brimming with characters whose lives overlap and whose stories interweave, Champaneri’s exquisite debut delves into the consequences of the past, and how stories that are told can become reality even when they contain barely a shred of truth. As Pramesh discovers, the bitterness of past wounds can bring hope for redemption and life.” —Bridget Thoreson, Booklist “Lush prose evokes the thick, close atmosphere of Kashi and the intricate religious practices upon which life and death depend. Rumor and superstition hold sway over even the most level-headed people, twisting what’s explainable into something extraordinary—with tragic consequences. . . . The City of Good Death is a breathtaking, unforgettable novel about how remembering the past is just as important as moving on.” —Eileen Gonzalez, Foreword Reviews, Starred Review "Champaneri’s Kashi is teeming and vivid . . . the book frequently charms, and it's as full of humor, warmth, and mystery as Kashi’s own marketplace." —Kirkus Reviews “The City of Good Death is the debut novel of Priyanka Champaneri but it has the confidence of a master storyteller. Drawing on the rich literary traditions of Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, Champaneri’s epic saga will satisfy armchair travelers thirsty for adventure, and sick of looking out their windows.” —Chicago Review of Books "In intricate detail and with remarkable skill, Champaneri writes a powerful tale about the pull of the past and our aching need to understand the mysteries and misunderstandings that thwart our relationships. An atmospheric and immersive debut with a rich cast of characters you won’t soon forget." —Marjan Kamali, author of The Stationery Shop
Why do America’s cities look the way they do? If we want to know the answer, we should start by looking at our relationship with animals. Americans once lived alongside animals. They raised them, worked them, ate them, and lived off their products. This was true not just in rural areas but also in cities, which were crowded with livestock and beasts of burden. But as urban areas grew in the nineteenth century, these relationships changed. Slaughterhouses, dairies, and hog ranches receded into suburbs and hinterlands. Milk and meat increasingly came from stores, while the family cow and pig gave way to the household pet. This great shift, Andrew Robichaud reveals, transformed people’s relationships with animals and nature and radically altered ideas about what it means to be human. As Animal City illustrates, these transformations in human and animal lives were not inevitable results of population growth but rather followed decades of social and political struggles. City officials sought to control urban animal populations and developed sweeping regulatory powers that ushered in new forms of urban life. Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals worked to enhance certain animals’ moral standing in law and culture, in turn inspiring new child welfare laws and spurring other wide-ranging reforms. The animal city is still with us today. The urban landscapes we inhabit are products of the transformations of the nineteenth century. From urban development to environmental inequality, our cities still bear the scars of the domestication of urban America.
“An intimate and deeply human memoir that shows why we should all be concerned about nuclear safety, and the dangers of ignoring science in the name of national security.”—Rebecca Skloot, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks A shocking account of the government’s attempt to conceal the effects of the toxic waste released by a secret nuclear weapons plant in Colorado and a community’s vain search for justice—soon to be a feature documentary Kristen Iversen grew up in a small Colorado town close to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated "the most contaminated site in America." Full Body Burden is the story of a childhood and adolescence in the shadow of the Cold War, in a landscape at once startlingly beautiful and--unknown to those who lived there--tainted with invisible yet deadly particles of plutonium. It's also a book about the destructive power of secrets--both family and government. Her father's hidden liquor bottles, the strange cancers in children in the neighborhood, the truth about what was made at Rocky Flats--best not to inquire too deeply into any of it. But as Iversen grew older, she began to ask questions and discovered some disturbing realities. Based on extensive interviews, FBI and EPA documents, and class-action testimony, this taut, beautifully written book is both captivating and unnerving.
As a serving police officer, Los Angeles Times bestselling author Neal Griffin saw how family ties, loyalty to friends, and their own ambitions could lead young men to make choices that got them hurt, killed, or imprisoned. He explores this complex web of relationships and pressures in The Burden of Truth. In a small city in southern California, 18 year-old Omar Ortega is about to graduate high school. For years, he’s danced on the fringes of gang life, trying desperately to stay out of the cross-hairs. Once Omar joins the Army, his salary, plus his meager savings, will get his mother and siblings out of the barrio, where they’ve lived since his father was deported. One night, everything changes. Newly released from prison, Chunks, the gang’s shot-caller, has plans for Omar. That boy, Chunks thinks, needs to be jumped in. By dawn, Omar will be labeled a cop-killer. Law-and-order advocates and community organizers will battle over Omar’s fate in the court of public opinion while the criminal justice system grips him in its teeth. One night can destroy a man and all who depend on him. That he’s innocent does not matter. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
