Wind through the criminal history of the cities along northeast Wisconsin’s Fox River with the author of Milwaukee Mafia as your guide. The safe and sedate Fox Cities have seen their share of horrible crimes. Coldblooded murder, kidnapping, prostitution, organized crime and other misdeeds shocked and appalled not just the community but the entire state. Murderer Porter Ross tried to commit suicide by eating bedsprings. Wenzel Kabat mutilated and burned a man in order to take over his farm. The Appleton Butcher left dismembered human remains on a playground for children to find. In this volume, crime writer and leading expert on the Milwaukee Mafia Gavin Schmitt turns his magnifying glass on small-town America. Includes photos!

(Book). One of the most successful songwriters and composers of the last 25 years, Steve Dorff has penned over 20 Top 10 hits for pop and country artists around the world, including Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion, Blake Shelton, Smokey Robinson, Kenny Rogers, Ray Charles, Anne Murray, Whitney Houston, George Strait, Dolly Parton, Judy Collins, Cher, Dusty Springfield, Ringo Starr, and Garth Brooks. He has scored for television shows, including Growing Pains , Major Dad , Murder She Wrote , Reba , and several films, including Any Which Way but Loose for which he penned the titular song, and more recently, he has embarked on Broadway (forthcoming musical Josephine ). Chronicling his four decades behind the music, Steve Dorff gives anecdotes, advice, and insights into his journey. The book follows Steve from his childhood in Queens to Manhattan to Nashville and to his eventual arrival in Los Angeles, California. Oftentimes, songs are attributed to the singers who perform them, but it is the songwriter who really knows the story behind the story from conception to execution. Full of heartfelt stories, hard-earned wisdom, and delightful wit, I Wrote That One, Too . . . is a great read for musicians, music fans, and whoever has chased their dreams and survived the surprising but often serendipitous turns in the road.

The inspiring true story of "one of the country's finest educators" (National Review) and the school he changed forever. Under the leadership of highly unorthodox principal Dr. Ben Chavis, Oakland's American Indian Public Charter School was hailed as an "education miracle" by governor Arnold Schwarzenegger after it was transformed from a failing "nuisance" into one of the best public middle schools in the nation. This is the story of that transformation and of a man who dared to be different. With his rigorous, no-nonsense approach, Dr. Chavis debunks the myth that poor, minority, inner-city schools have little chance at academic excellence. Focusing on back-tobasics ideals, he has created a structured educational model that, combined with the enthusiasm of his students and teachers, delivers astounding results. In Crazy Like a Fox, Dr. Chavis recounts how he did it-in his own words and through the stories of the extraordinary young people he's helped.

For the first time in human history more people now live and towns and cities than in rural areas. In the wealthier countries of the world, the transition from predominantly rural to urban habitation is more or less complete. But in many parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, urban populations are expanding rapidly. Current UN projections indicate that virtually all population growth in the world over the next 30 years will be absorbed by towns and cities in developing countries. These simple demographic facts have profound implications for those concerned with understanding and addressing the pressing global development challenges of reducing poverty, promoting economic growth, improving human security and confronting environmental change. This revised and expanded second edition of Cities and Development explores the dynamic relationship between urbanism and development from a global perspective. The book surveys a wide range of topics, including: the historical origins of world urbanization; the role cities play in the process of economic development; the nature of urban poverty and the challenge of promoting sustainable livelihoods; the complexities of managing urban land, housing, infrastructure and urban services; and the spectres of endemic crime, conflict and violence in urban areas. This updated volume also contains two entirely new chapters: one that examines the links between urbanisation and environmental change, and a second that focuses on urban governance and politics. Adopting a multidisciplinary perspective, the book critically engages with debates in urban studies, geography and international development studies. Each chapter includes supplements in the form of case studies, chapter summaries, questions for discussion and suggested further readings. The book is targeted at upper-level undergraduate and graduate students interested in geography, urban studies and international development studies, as well as policy makers, urban planners and development practitioners.

Young Adult Native American NovelApple Starkington turned her back on her Native American heritage the moment she was called a racial slur for someone of white and Indian descent, not that she really even knew how to be an Indian. Too bad the white world doesn't accept her either. And so begins her quirky habits to gain acceptance. Apple's name, chosen by her Indian mother on her deathbed, has a double meaning: treasured apple of my eye, but also the negative connotation-a person who is red, or Indian, on the outside, but white on the inside.After her wealthy father gives her the boot one summer, Apple reluctantly agrees to visit her Native American relatives on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota for the first time. Apple learns to deal with the culture shock of Indian customs and the Native Michif language, while she tries to deal with a vengeful Indian man who loved her mother in high school but now hates Apple because her mom married a white man.As Apple meets her Indian relatives, she shatters Indian stereotypes and learns what it means to find her place in a world divided by color.

In search of a place to call home, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to America. But lacking a written language of their own, the Hmong experience has been primarily recorded by others. Driven to tell her family’s story after her grandmother’s death, The Latehomecomer is Kao Kalia Yang’s tribute to the remarkable woman whose spirit held them all together. It is also an eloquent, firsthand account of a people who have worked hard to make their voices heard. Beginning in the 1970s, as the Hmong were being massacred for their collaboration with the United States during the Vietnam War, Yang recounts the harrowing story of her family’s captivity, the daring rescue undertaken by her father and uncles, and their narrow escape into Thailand where Yang was born in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp. When she was six years old, Yang’s family immigrated to America, and she evocatively captures the challenges of adapting to a new place and a new language. Through her words, the dreams, wisdom, and traditions passed down from her grandmother and shared by an entire community have finally found a voice. Together with her sister, Kao Kalia Yang is the founder of a company dedicated to helping immigrants with writing, translating, and business services. A graduate of Carleton College and Columbia University, Yang has recently screened The Place Where We Were Born, a film documenting the experiences of Hmong American refugees. Visit her website at www.kaokaliayang.com.

Author Roberta Capasso explores the way generations of Native American children were forcibly taken from their families and subjected to the federal government's Indian boarding school experiment in order to assimilate them. As a direct descendant of a woman victimized by this experiment, the author tells with raw emotion and diligent archival research the story of the historical and emotional bonds between her deceased relatives and herself. Like a detective cracking a murder mystery, discrepancies between the Carlisle Indian School's accounts and a great-grandmother's real life story are exposed, with fascinating and fortuitous twists and turns along the way. This story of her great-great-grandmother Elizabeth and her great-grandmother Sophia must be told to everyone. Becoming a voice for Oneida Turtle Clan as a descendant of Sky Woman, in the Oneida Creation Story, the author hopes to spread truth and knowledge to all cultures in a captivating narrative of a tragic period in United States History.

One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels One of the New York Times' 25 Most Significant New York City Novels From the Last 100 Years "A towering landmark of postwar Realism…A sustained work of prose so lucid and fine it seems less written than carved." —David Foster Wallace Otto and Sophie Bentwood live in a changing neighborhood in Brooklyn. Their stainless-steel kitchen is newly installed, and their Mercedes is parked curbside. After Sophie is bitten on the hand while trying to feed a stray, perhaps rabies-infected cat, a series of small and ominous disasters begin to plague the Bentwoods' lives, revealing the fault lines and fractures in a marriage—and a society—wrenching itself apart. First published in 1970 to wide acclaim, Desperate Characters stands as one of the most dazzling and rigorous examples of the storyteller's craft in postwar American literature — a novel that, according to Irving Howe, ranks with "Billy Budd, The Great Gatsby, Miss Lonelyhearts, and Seize the Day."