- As Good As It Gets
- Larry Cuban takes a richly detailed history of the Austin, Texas, school district, under Superintendent Pat Forgione, to ask the question that few politicians and school reformers want to touch. Given effective use of widely welcomed reforms, can school policies and practices put all children at the same academic level? Are class and ethnic differences in academic performance within the power of schools to change? Austin’s signal successes amid failure hold answers to tough questions facing urban district leaders across the nation.
- Hardcover February 2010
- Landscapes of Development
- This book examines the impact of development policies and politics on the physical environment of the Eastern Mediterranean, a region defined here not as a rigid geographical area but as a larger cultural context. Nine essays examine formal manifestations of development, placing the spotlight on urban and rural schemes, housing projects, and agro-landscapes and dams from Israel to Turkey, and from Greece to Syria.
- Paperback January 2010
- The Superlative City
- In the last few years, the Persian Gulf city of Dubai has exploded from the Arabian sands onto the world stage. In The Superlative City, contributors from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and colleagues offer the most serious analyses of the city to appear to date, situating remarkable developments such as the size of real estate projects and the speed of urbanization in their local and global architectural, political, and economic contexts.
- Paperback January 2010
- Better Living through Economics
- Economists were obviously instrumental in revising the consumer price index and in devising auctions for allocating spectrum rights to cell phone providers in the 1990s. But perhaps more surprisingly, economists built the foundation for eliminating the military draft in favor of an all-volunteer army in 1973, for passing the Earned Income Tax Credit in 1975, and for implementing the Pension Reform Act of 2006 that allowed employers to automatically enroll employees in a 401(k).Better Living Through Economics consists of twelve case studies that demonstrate how economic research has improved economic and social conditions over the past half century by influencing public policy decisions.
- Hardcover January 2010
- Poverty and Poverty Alleviation Strategies in North America
- Poverty and Poverty Alleviation Strategies in North America is a dialogue about poverty in North America, especially in Mexico and the United States. In this book, twelve poverty scholars in Mexico and the United States contribute to the understanding of the roots of poverty and build knowledge about effective policy alleviation strategies.
- Paperback October 2009
- Who Decides the Budget?
- The budget is the main tool used to allocate scarce public resources, and it is in the context of the budget process that politicians must make trade-offs between different policy priorities. This volume describes the budget practices, both formal and informal, in ten countries of Latin America and explains fiscal results in terms of these four features.
- Paperback September 2009
- The Sandbox Investment
- The rich have always valued early education, and for the past forty years, millions of poorer kids have had Head Start. Now, more and more middle class parents have realized that a good preschool is the smartest investment they can make in their children's future in a competitive world. Writing with the verve of a magazine journalist and the authority of a scholar, Kirp makes the ideal guide to this quiet movement and campaign.
- Paperback May 2009
- Hope and Despair in the American City
In Hope and Despair, Gerald Grant compares two cities—his hometown of Syracuse, New York, and Raleigh, North Carolina—in order to examine the consequences of the nation’s ongoing educational inequities. The result is an ambitious portrait—sometimes disturbing, often inspiring—of two cities that exemplify our nation’s greatest educational challenges, as well as a passionate exploration of the potential for school reform that exists for our urban schools today.
- Hardcover May 2009
- On Nuclear Terrorism
- Levi takes us inside nuclear terrorism and behind the decisions a terrorist leader would be faced with in pursuing a nuclear plot. Surveying the broad universe of plots and defenses, this accessible account shows how a wide-ranging defense that integrates the tools of weapon and materials security, law enforcement, intelligence, border controls, diplomacy, and the military can multiply, intensify, and compound the possibility that nuclear terrorists will fail.
- Paperback May 2009
- Worst-Case Scenarios
- Nuclear bombs in suitcases, anthrax bacilli in ventilators, tsunamis and meteors, avian flu, scorchingly hot temperatures: nightmares that were once the plot of Hollywood movies are now frighteningly real possibilities. Sunstein explores these and other worst-case scenarios and how we might best prevent them in this vivid, illuminating, and highly original analysis.
- Paperback May 2009
- Beyond Facts
Traditionally, the concept of quality of life has been viewed through objective indicators of living conditions, basic needs, or capabilities. In Beyond Facts, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) looks at quality of life through the perceptions of millions of Latin Americans. Using an enhanced version of the recently created Gallup World Poll that incorporates Latin America–specific questions, the IDB surveyed people from throughout the region and found that reality and perceptions of quality of life are often very different. Beyond Facts attempts to explain these differences and consider their implications for both politics and policy.
- Hardcover March 2009
- Government by Contract
- Explains the phenomenon and scope of government outsourcing and sets an agenda for future research attentive to workforce capacities as well as legal, economic, and political concerns.
- Hardcover February 2009
- A Nation by Design
- In A Nation by Design, Aristide Zolberg explores American immigration policy from the colonial period to the present, discussing how it has been used as a tool of nation building. This is an authoritative account of American immigration history and the political and social factors that brought it about. Zolberg's book shows how America has struggled to shape the immigration process to construct the kind of population it desires.
- Paperback December 2008
See also: All Books in POLITICAL SCIENCE.