Social Systems

A man accused of a murder he didn't commit languishes on death row. A crusading lawyer is determined to free him. This powerful book reads like a compelling legal thriller with one crucial difference: Justice is not served in the end.In 1986, Kris Maharaj was arrested in Miami for the murder of his ex-business partner. A witness swore he saw him pull the trigger and a jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death. But he swears he didn't do it. Twenty years later, he's bankrupted himself on appeals and been abandoned by everyone but his wife.

Toxic Water, Toxic System exposes the consequences of a seemingly anonymous authoritarian state willing to maintain white supremacy at any cost—including poisoning an entire city and shutting off water to thousands of people. Weaving together narratives of frontline activists along with archival data, Michael Mascarenhas provides a powerful exploration of the political alliances and bureaucratic mechanisms that uphold inequality.

It’s a multi-session communications retreat in a "box"! And with Verbal Mastery, this eleven-part audio program, you’ll have unlimited access to the world’s top communication experts any time you want. Become a clever conversationalist and confident communicator, never at a loss for words in any social or work situation. From your choice of words to how to use them to work a room, the Verbal Mastery audio suite offers hours of techniques to increase your speaking power.

The sad truth is that the US criminal justice system doesn’t work for many different reasons - from our overflowing prisons, to the destructive war on drugs and disproportionate effect on minority communities, to conflicts between police and citizens and problems with prosecutors and the courts. In Fixing the US Criminal Justice System, author Paul Brakke provides an in-depth look from a conservative perspective at the many flaws in the system and how to fix them.

At the dawn of the 21st century, British society is still shaped by a private education system devised to gentrify the Victorian middle classes and produce gentlemen to run the Empire. Yet it is not on the political agenda. It is rarely the subject of public debate, and we remain blind to its psychological implications. Can we afford to go on ignoring this issue? Will we continue to sacrifice the welfare of our children to satisfy our antiquated social aspirations?

In a world where hunger persists amid abundance and climate change threatens our very existence, Shannon Dobbs presents a groundbreaking solution to our broken food system. This isn't just another book about the problem—it's a comprehensive guide to fixing it. Dobbs, an Army veteran turned food system innovator, unveils the revolutionary Nexus and Nodes model. This scalable approach bridges the gap between food waste and food insecurity, turning challenges into opportunities for community empowerment and environmental healing.

In this book, Osborne uses compelling stories from cities like New Orleans and lays out the history and possible future of public education. Ultimately, he uses his extensive research to argue that, in today's world, we should treat every public school like a charter school and grant them autonomy, accountability, diversity of school designs, and parental choice.

Fun fact: Blondes do not have more fun! The Mainland is Samara Yancy’s new home. Away from the authorities on The Rock, who view her as a felon. But life here is no picnic. It turns out, no amount of blood money or minions can bring you happiness. But, if she doesn’t return voluntarily, her family will suffer in her stead. So, it’s time to rally her allies and craft a strategy to get her people out; regardless of the consequences. But as usual, nothing goes according to plan. As each layer of deception unfolds, she discovers the depth of rot within her once beloved city/state ...

Recent reports show that women make up the fastest-growing population within the United States’ criminal justice system. And yet, despite necessary conversations about incarceration and prison abolition, their stories of abuse, neglect, poverty, and family separation often go untold. Now, through immersive storytelling and expert analysis of women’s lives after prison, anthropologist Jorja Leap explores their journeys into, through, and beyond the jail cell.

Confessions of a Public Defender describes the experiences of a criminal lawyer. The events and the descriptions in this book are derived from real courtroom experiences. The cases and outcomes are part of David Carson Futch's life experience that he wished had been available to him before law school. The only book he read concerning the actual law school experience was called One L, referring to a first-year law student.

What if you were only known for the worst thing you've ever done? Not only does the US have the highest rate of incarceration in the world, it also makes certain that the stigma of a felony conviction follows people who have already served their time. After she came to understand both the frustrations and untapped potential of the incarcerated, Catherine Hoke founded Defy Ventures, a revolutionary organization devoted to transforming the lives of people both inside and outside prison walls. A Second Chance is the story of how Defy came to be.

In Get Off My Neck, Debbie Hines draws on her unique perspective as a trial lawyer, former Baltimore prosecutor, and assistant attorney general for the State of Maryland to argue that US prosecutors, as the most powerful players in the criminal justice system, systematically target and criminalize Black people. Hines describes her disillusionment as a young Black woman who initially entered the profession with the goal of helping victims of crimes, only to discover herself aiding and abetting a system that prizes plea bargaining, speedy conviction, and excessive punishment above all else.

Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein identify two overriding problems that have led Congress—and the United States—to the brink of institutional collapse. But they offer a panoply of useful ideas and reforms, endorsing some solutions, like greater public participation and institutional restructuring, while debunking others, like independent or third-party candidates. Above all, they call on the media as well as the public to focus on the true causes of dysfunction rather than just throwing the bums out every election cycle.

What will it take to restore balance to our world, repair past injustices, and support future generations' survival? Looking deeply into the web of life that created and supports us, and drawing inspiration from diverse cultural traditions and perspectives, spirited thinkers Michael Pawlyn and Sarah Ichioka propose a bold set of regenerative principles with potential to transform how we design, make, and manage our buildings; infrastructure; and communities.

Der nächste Kanzler? Friedrich Merz hat es gegen alle Widerstände und nach mehreren Anläufen an die Spitze der CDU geschafft. Jetzt hat der Kandidat der Union gute Aussichten, der nächste Bundeskanzler zu werden. Wer ist dieser Friedrich Merz, der nach seinem Ausstieg aus der Politik ein beispielloses Comeback versucht? Er provoziert mit Debatten über die »Leitkultur« und hat sich als Gegenentwurf zu Angela Merkel präsentiert. Wie verlief sein Weg an die Macht? Was sind seine politischen Standpunkte? Und was hätten wir von einem Kanzler Merz zu erwarten?

Nobody's Child traces the legal definition of "insanity" back to its inception in Victorian Britain nearly 200 years ago, from when our understanding of the human mind was in its infancy, to today, when questions of race, class, and ability so often determine who is legally "insane" and who is criminally guilty. Vinocour explains how "competency" and "insanity" are creatures of a legal system, not of psychiatric reality, and how, in criminal law, the insanity defense has too often been a luxury of the rich and white.

In 2013, the Toronto Police Service announced that the disappearances of three men—Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, and Majeed Kayhan—from Toronto's gay village were, perhaps, linked. On January 18, 2018, Bruce McArthur would be arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder, and later sentenced for the murders of eight men. This book tells the complete story of the McArthur murders. Based on more than five years of in-depth reporting, this is also a story of police failure, of how the queer community responded, and the story of the eight men and the lives they left behind.

Tout commence par un mail d’alerte, en février 2022, quelques mois avant le drame qui a coûté la vie à une fillette dans une crèche à Lyon. Deux ans et demi d’investigations, 200 témoins, des lanceurs d’alerte qui risquent leur vie professionnelle, des documents explosifs démontant l’enfer du décor. Ce récit saisissant révèle les secrets de People&Baby, le "premier gestionnaire indépendant français de crèches". Un groupe qui pèserait un milliard d’euros. Mais un ogre peut en cacher bien d’autres. Un secteur qui fait bloc, des mairies complices, le sommet de l’État impliqué.

This is the first book to trace the fascinating parallel history of law and science from antiquity to modern times, showing how the two disciplines have always influenced each other - until recently. In the past few years, the scientific paradigm has shifted dramatically, from seeing the natural world as a kind of cosmic machine to understanding it as a network of fluidly interacting communities. But law is stuck in a mechanistic, 17th-century view that the world is made up of discrete individual parts.

New Yorker journalist Jonathan Blitzer has been covering the immigration crisis at America’s southern border for nearly a decade, but the current emergency is the end of a much larger story. In this, his first book, Blitzer goes back to the beginning: to the shadowy civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s; to the American prison system in the 1990s and the policies of mass deportation that transformed local street criminals into international crime syndicates.