Immediately after 1989, newly emerging polities in Eastern Europe had to contend with an overbearing and dominant legacy: the Soviet model of the state. At that time, the strength of the state looked like a massive obstacle to change; less than a decade later, the state's dominant characteristic was no longer its overweening powerfulness, but rather its utter decrepitude. Consequently, the role of the central state in managing economies, providing social services, and maintaining infrastructure came into question. Focusing on his native Bulgaria, Venelin I. Ganev explores in fine-grained detail the weakening of the central state in post-Soviet Eastern Europe. Ganev starts with the structural characteristics of the Soviet satellites, and in particular the forms of elite agency favored in the socialist party-state. As state socialism collapsed, Ganev demonstrates, its institutional legacy presented functionaries who had become accustomed to power with a matrix of opportunities and constraints. In order to maximize their advantage under such conditions, these elites did not need a robust state apparatus—in fact, all of the incentives under postsocialism pushed them to subvert the infrastructure of governance. Throughout Preying on the State, Ganev argues that the causes of state malfunctioning go much deeper than the policy preferences of "free marketeers" who deliberately dismantled the state. He systematically analyzes the multiple dimensions, implications, and significance of the institutional and social processes that transformed the organizational basis of effective governance.

Miller not only argues that criminal justice zealots are harming the democracy they are sworn to protect, but that authoritarians unfriendly to democracy are stoking public fear in order to convince citizens to relinquish traditional legal rights. Those are the very rights that thwart implementation of an agenda of social control through government power. Miller contends that an imaginary "drug crisis" has been manufactured by authoritarians in order to mask their war on democracy. He not only examines numerous civil rights sacrificed in the name of drugs, but demonstrates how their loss harms ordinary Americans in their everyday lives.

From the pen of a small-town lawyer comes the shocking, true story of the downfall of Jimmy Swaggart.

New York Times bestselling author of Labor Day With a New Preface When it was first published in 1998, At Home in the World set off a furor in the literary world and beyond. Joyce Maynard's memoir broke a silence concerning her relationship—at age eighteen—with J.D. Salinger, the famously reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye, then age fifty-three, who had read a story she wrote for The New York Times in her freshman year of college and sent her a letter that changed her life. Reviewers called her book "shameless" and "powerful" and its author was simultaneously reviled and cheered. With what some have viewed as shocking honesty, Maynard explores her coming of age in an alcoholic family, her mother's dream to mold her into a writer, her self-imposed exile from the world of her peers when she left Yale to live with Salinger, and her struggle to reclaim her sense of self in the crushing aftermath of his dismissal of her not long after her nineteenth birthday. A quarter of a century later—having become a writer, survived the end of her marriage and the deaths of her parents, and with an eighteen-year-old daughter of her own—Maynard pays a visit to the man who broke her heart. The story she tells—of the girl she was and the woman she became—is at once devastating, inspiring, and triumphant.

From the Number One international bestselling author of Jurassic Park comes this classic Crichton page-turner, weaving together heart-pounding thrills with cutting-edge technology. In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles - micro-robots - has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive. It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour. Every attempt to destroy it has failed. And we are the prey. As fresh as today's headlines, Michael Crichton's most compelling novel yet tells the story of a mechanical plague, and the desperate efforts of a handful of scientists to stop it. Drawing on up-to-the-minute science fact, PREY takes us into the emerging realms of nanotechnology and artificial distributed intelligence - in a story of breathtaking suspense.

For twenty years, John Sandford's novels have been beloved for their "ingenious plots, vivid characters, crisp dialogue and endless surprises" (The Washington Post), and nowhere are those more in evidence than in the sudden twists and shocks of Wicked Prey.Out of Lucas Davenport's past comes a psycho nursing a violent grudge. But why go after Davenport for revenge when Davenport's young daughter is so close-and so vulnerable?

The online environment has emerged as a continuous and unfettered source of interpersonal criminal activity beyond physical boundaries. Cyberpredators commit their crimes by employing the Internet and online services—social network platforms, online groups and organizations, smart phone apps, bulletin board systems, online forums, websites, internet relay chat channels—to locate and harm victims of all ages through attacking, exploiting, humiliating, bullying, harassing, threatening, defrauding, and extorting. Cyberpredators and Their Prey describes non-sexual and sexual interpersonal crimes—online romance scam, swatting, trolling, stalking, bullying, harassment, minor sexting, sexual trafficking, child sexual abuse material, sextortion, and image-based sexual abuse offenses. Each chapter contains: crime definition and relevant issues; typical cyberpredator, motives, and methods; typical victims and behaviors that make them targets; current criminal laws for prosecuting cybercrimes and assessment of their applicability and effectiveness as deterrents; the crime’s impact on individual victims and society in general; and cybersecurity prevention and intervention strategies. Also covered are the unique challenges that the regulation, investigation, and prosecution of these cybercrimes pose to criminal justice and private security agents worldwide; the need for society to hold companies operating online responsible for their role in cybercrime; and how aspects of the online environment (i.e., anonymity, toxic disinhibition, de-individuation, inculpability) contribute to harmful and abusive interpersonal interaction, particularly when enacted by perpetrators as part of a group attack. Key features: Portrays material through multidisciplinary lens of psychology, criminal justice, law, and security Provides consistent, practical information about online criminals and victims Compares online to offline versions of the same crime Discusses adequacy of current laws for prosecuting cybercriminals Considers elements of the online environment that foster criminal activity Describes social engineering techniques Considers the role of intimate partner violence in cybercrimes Reviews 21st century skills needed to educate and protect potential targets Cyberpredators and Their Prey will prove essential reading to those who are studying to become, or are currently, security professionals; law enforcement personnel and investigators; intelligence agents; private investigators; lawyers; compliance officers; social service workers; and other professionals who deal with interpersonal cybercrime through the lens of social science.