If economic elites are notorious for circumventing tax obligations, how can institutionally weak governments get the wealthy to shoulder a greater tax burden? This book studies the factors behind the adoption of elite taxes for public safety purposes. Contrary to prominent explanations in the literature on the fiscal strengthening of the state – including the role of resource dependence and inequality – the book advances a theory of elite taxation that focuses on public safety crises as windows of opportunity and highlights the importance of business-government linkages to overcome mistrust toward government from corruption and lack of accountability. Based on evidence from across Latin America and rich case studies from experiences in Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Mexico, the book provides scholars and policymakers with a blueprint for contemporary state-building efforts in the developing world.

Human activities and decision-making have enormous impacts on the environment. This volume engages in critical conversations on these issues and how their inter-connectedness and outcomes shape the natural environment and human activity.

Arizona, 1884, and Vera Palmer, a 23 year old widow from genteel Connecticut arrives in the frontier town of Goose Flat to take up a prospecting claim inherited from her dead husband, and a part-time job as a bookeeper in a local boarding house. The boarding house is in fact a brothel but, needing the money, Vera takes the job anyway. She's soon drawn into the violent, abused lives of the working girls and Sadie, their Madame. Vera is attracted to bar regular Will Keane, a local lawyer, who helps her investigate the mining claim. Can love offer her an escape or will the unpredictable, dangerous world surrounding the Star Mansion brothel destroy the relationship and Vera's hopes of a new life? Here Allyson Stack offers a gripping, beautifully wrought love story amidst a wholly authentic evocation of the Wild West at its most threatening. 'An astonishing, accomplished novel. The vivid, visceral descriptions transport the reader to the Arizona of the 1880s and French Battlefields of 1918 as we follow the life of the extraordinary Vera Palmer. Alive with memorable characters, from the working girls in the brothel where Vera works as bookkeeper, to the pioneering and brave young woman doctor, ‘Tosh’, whom she befriends in wartime France, this is a novel to be savoured and remembered.' Maureen Myant, author of The Search 'An impressive debut that juxtaposes two periods in history which, though close in time, often seem so far apart in our imagination. From the Wild West to the Western Front, in Vera we have a protagonist, vulnerable and adventerous, open-hearted and independent, in whose company it is a pleasure to travel. The writing is luxurious and sensual. Under the Heartless Blue is a bewitching story of love, loss and survival told with humour and heart-breaking honesty." Iain Maloney, author of The Waves Burn Bright, Silma Hill and First Time Solo 'Allyson Stack brings us a committed, luminous debut; a historical novel you won’t forget. Set beneath the capricious skies of 1918 Europe and the wild old Arizona Territory, Vera's story is gutsy, effervescent and mesmerizing.' Alan Warner, author of Morven Callar, The Stars in the Bright Sky and Dead Man's Pedal

The book that tells you all the things you felt you were expected to know about linguistics, but were afraid to ask about.*What do you know about Burushaski and Miwok?*What's the difference between paradigmatic and syntagmatic?*What is E-language?*What is a language?*Do parenthetical and non-restrictive mean the same thing?*How do you write a bibiliographic entry for a work you have not seen?Every student who has asked these questions needs this book. A compendium of useful things for linguistics students to know, from the IPA chart to the Saussurean dichotomies, this book will be the constant companion of anyone undertaking studies of linguistics. Part reference work, part revision guide, and with tables providing summary information on some 280 languages, the book provides a new learning tool as a supplement to the usual textbooks and glossaries.

Marriage globally is undergoing profound change, provoking widespread public comment and concern. Through the close ethnographic examination of case studies drawn from Africa, Asia, Europe and North America, Marriage in Past, Present and Future Tense places new and changing forms of marriage in comparative perspective as a transforming and also transformative social institution. In conditions of widespread socio-political inequality and instability, how are the personal, the familial and the political co-produced? How do marriages encapsulate the ways in which memories of past lives, present experience and imaginaries of the future are articulated? Exploring the ways that marriage draws together and distinguishes history and biography, ritual and law, economy and politics in intimate family life, this volume examines how familial and personal relations, and the ethical judgements they enfold, inform and configure social transformation. Contexts that have been partly shaped through civil wars, cold war and colonialism – as well as other forms of violent socio-political rupture – offer especially apt opportunities for tracing the interplay between marriage and politics. But rather than taking intimate family life and gendered practice as simply responsive to wider socio-political forces, this work explores how marriage may also create social change. Contributors consider the ways in which marital practice traverses the domains of politics, economics and religion, while marking a key site where the work of linking and distinguishing those domains is undertaken.

A detailed assessment of how Western thinking about India developed in the nineteenth century, focusing on the exceptionally full lives of the scholar-administrator Muir brothers. Structured around the lives and careers of two Scottish scholar-administrator brothers, Sir William and Dr John Muir, who served in the East India Company and the Raj in North-West India from 1827-1876, this book examines cultural, especially religious and educational attitudes and interactions during the period. The core of the study centres on a detailed examination of the brothers' seminal works on Vedic and Islamic history and society which, researched from Sanskrit and Arabic sources, became standard reference works on India's religions during the Raj. The publication of these works coincided with the outbreak of the Indian Uprising of 1857, on the nature of which William's correspondence with his brother and others allows some reconsideration, especially in respect of Muslim participation. Powell also examines the response of Indian Muslim scholars, particularly of Sir Saiyid Ahmad Khan, to William's critiques of Islam and the brothers' patronage of Oriental scholarship, comparative religion and education during their long retirement back in their native Scotland. The study contributes to current debates about the Scottish contribution to Empire with particular reference to India and to cultural issues. AVRIL A. POWELL is Reader Emerita in the History Department at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

This flip chart enables ready comparison of key images for each consonant and vowel. It is of particular importance for speech-language pathologists working with adults and children to change their articulation of sounds and for students of phonetics as they develop an understanding of the similarities and differences between sounds.

This book outlines and critiques international strategies and programmes designed to address difficulties in literacy development. The high-profile team of contributors consider teaching programmes which operate at family, school, pupil and teacher levels. They argue that school is not the only legitimate location for literacy education, and show how difficulties in literacy can be addressed sequentially, both in and out of the school context. Issues addressed include: *the dilemmas facing practitioners in choosing between multiple approaches to practice *the factors which must be addressed in strategies which operate at the level of the family and the community *how to ensure the school can support programmes designed to improve literacy learning *how to put theory into practice in programmes designed for use with individual students *the teacher as 'reflective practitioner' - developing professional practice which effectively raises literacy achievement. This book will be of interest to postgraduate students, teachers, researchers, educational professionals and policymakers who are looking for practical strategies to address difficulties in literacy development. This reader forms the basis of the Open University's Difficulties in Literacy Development course, and is ideal for similar courses nationally and internationally.