?Scream or yell and I kill you now.? The masked man said in a deep and gruff voice. I wasn't sure who it was, but I knew it was a male by his voice. He held a knife at my throat and was on top of me. ?You can make this easy or you can make this hard. That is up to you.? He undid my slacks that I was wearing and pulled them down around my ankles. He then grabbed my panties and ripped them off. I am sure he tossed them somewhere, he wasn't too worried about where they had landed. I felt a surge of fear come over me when I realized what was happening and about to happen to me. I was going to be a rape victim! I didn't want to struggle for fear of him stabbing me with the knife he held, either by accident or on purpose. I couldn't scream for fear he might kill me. All I could do was hope that a passerby would see us, but I knew that wouldn't be possible. He had pulled me deep into the ally where it was dark. I heard some trash cans rattling and I was hoping that maybe it was a homeless person looking for food and saw what was happening. But my hopes were dashed when I realized it was a couple of alley cats that began to fight with each other. The irony of it was that it was a male cat trying to have sex with a female cat and she was putting up a fight. Probably a better one than I was I bet. Two potential rapes in one alley. How ironic is that? I found myself getting lost in my own thoughts when suddenly the man on top of me went limp. No, not his male part, I mean his whole body. Then someone rolled him off of me. It was too dark to make out who it was, but a street light lit up his face, it was Douglas! The knife went flying to one side and Douglas and Mrs. James? son were soon in a scuffle. I didn't know where my panties were, but I was able to pull up my pants. My purse was nowhere to be found, which had my cell phone in it.

A penetrating take on how our planet would respond without the relentless pressure of the human presence

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West? - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions? Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.

Kristen Block examines the entangled histories of Spain and England in the Caribbean during the long seventeenth century, focusing on colonialism's two main goals: the search for profit and the call to Christian dominance. Using the stories of ordinary people, Block illustrates how engaging with the powerful rhetoric and rituals of Christianity was central to survival. Isobel Criolla was a runaway slave in Cartagena who successfully lobbied the Spanish governor not to return her to an abusive mistress. Nicolas Burundel was a French Calvinist who served as henchman to the Spanish governor of Jamaica before his arrest by the Inquisition for heresy. Henry Whistler was an English sailor sent to the Caribbean under Oliver Cromwell's plan for holy war against Catholic Spain. Yaff and Nell were slaves who served a Quaker plantation owner, Lewis Morris, in Barbados. Seen from their on-the-ground perspective, the development of modern capitalism, race, and Christianity emerges as a story of negotiation, contingency, humanity, and the quest for community. Ordinary Lives in the Early Caribbean works in both a comparative and an integrative Atlantic world frame, drawing on archival sources from Spain, England, Barbados, Colombia, and the United States. It pushes the boundaries of how historians read silences in the archive, asking difficult questions about how self-censorship, anxiety, and shame have shaped the historical record. The book also encourages readers to expand their concept of religious history beyond a focus on theology, ideals, and pious exemplars to examine the communal efforts of pirates, smugglers, slaves, and adventurers who together shaped the Caribbean's emerging moral economy.

Iris Ritchie, part time bookkeeper, wife and mother, wakes up in hospital thinking she's killed a cyclist. The cyclist is fine, but God has punished Iris by giving her a special mission. She's the most normal person he could find; if she can be heroic, anybody can. Grumpily, Iris finds herself forced to choose between saving the world, and saving her family.

This book aims to portray migratory experiences, documented in the form of biographical narratives. We are interested in the dynamic aspect of migration, which effectively becomes a complex trajectory, made up of stages, returns, and circulations and no longer simply, as in the industrial era, a bipolar exile (there and here). In these complex and dynamic movements, many trajectories become bifurcations, by which we mean shifting fates. In these stories we found paths, events, and bifurcations, all combined together, in terms of biographical construction based on accumulated experiences. These narratives are both very banal and very unusual journeys, portraying a new international human globalization. They are simultaneously stories of barriers to be crossed in chaotic situations interspersed with peaceful events in quiet contexts. These journeys reveal not only the weight of migration policies, but also the certification policies implemented and developed by various countries. This book presents itineraries, social logics of mobility; the routes become the analysts. If statistics record regularities, the personal approach captures specificities that produce meaning and contribute to a reinterpretation of current forms of mobility. “The superb collection of ethnographies that the reader will find in the pages to follow provide yet further insight into the ways in which movement across state borders represents a creative accomplishment. With cases selected from around the world – the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America, North America, and Europe – the chapter in this book demonstrate that migration is undertaken not only against states and their bureaucracies, but in tension with and possibly in opposition to migrants’ closest associates – precisely the people whom social capital theory paints as the font of the resources that make migration possible. ” – Roger Waldinger, University of California Los Angeles, USA Contents Foreword – Roger Waldinger Introduction – Víctor Zúñiga, Kamel Doraï, Delphine Mercier, and Michel Peraldi Part One: Migrant Families and Their Re-configuration Chinese Migrant Women Creating Meaningful Lives Despite Vulnerable Statuses – Hélène Le Bail Conflict and Migration from Iraq: Building a Life in Exile Amid the Twists and Turns of a Dramatic History – Cyril Roussel From Family Dispersion to Asylum-Seeking: Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon and Syria – Kamel Doraï Part Two: Children’s Movements Across Borders A left-behind child from El Alto. Protection Strategies and Redefinition of Kinship Ties for the Children of Migrant Women in Bolivia – Robin Cavagnoud Journey to the Ordinary “Integration” of an Undocumented Moroccan Migrant in France – Mustapha El Miri Children Circulating Between the United States and Mexico – Víctor Zúñiga and Betsabé Román-González Part Three: From Adventure to Waiting: Emancipation of Restricted Trajectories Life While Waiting: Experiencing the Asylum Application in France – Carolina Kobelinsky A Family Resemblance: Migration, Work and Loyalty – Frédéric Décosse ‘Suzana’s choices’ Working in the maquiladoras, migrating to survive and living transnationally – Delphine Mercier Part Four: From Expatriate to Migrant? From “Expats” to migrants: Mano’s worlds in Marrakesh – Michel Peraldi The Aeronautical Engineer in Flight: Turbulence and the Capacity for Agency Across Borders – Alfredo Hualde Being a Doctor Over Here or Over There Collective action: the foundation of the capacity for agency in the migratory process? – Ariel Mendez Conclusion: Uncertainty, Anticipated – Deborah A. Boehm