Seated at the table are the typical eclectic looking group of educated, bourgeoisie wannabe, brothas and sistas who are arguing, analyzing, and contemplating the organizing of a protest movement against an Arab-owned supermarket across the street that continuously sell bad hamburger meat. Jimmy the bartender tells me that these cats-some of whom are cantankerous college students, wannabe-poets, and "spoken word artists" that came with Gypsy-have been at it all night, always gathering at the same circled table to discuss everything from politics, neighborhood revitalization, socio-cultural criticism, and James Baldwin, to the New Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam, and the failure of black leadership. Jimmy calls us "Push Nevahda and the Vicious Circle." Me, Gypsy, BJ, Carmen and this new bitch I met on Black Planet named Melina. She's a mixed bitch from Rochester or Belleville who thinks that she's better than everybody else, especially other black folks, because she's educated and has white blood in her. The last time we were here I had to remind her fake ass that everybody sitting at the bar with me got degrees, she ain't the only one. Other friends come and go but we are basically what make up the crew.

The focus of this volume is comprised of the fundamentals, models, and information technologies (IT) methods and tools for disaster prediction and mitigation. A more detailed list of topics includes mathematical and computational modeling of processes leading to or producing disasters, modeling of disaster effects, IT means for disaster mitigation, including data mining tools, knowledge-based and expert systems for use in disaster circumstances, GIS-based systems for disaster prevention and mitigation and equipment for disaster-prone areas. A specific type or class of disasters (natural or human-made), however will not be part of the main focus of this work. Instead, this book was conceived to offer a comprehensive, integrative view on disasters, seeking to determine what various disasters have in common. Because disaster resilience and mitigation involve humans, societies and cultures, not only technologies and economic models, special attention was paid in this volume to gain a comprehensive view on these issues, as a foundation of the IT tool design.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1953.

The continuing encroachment of human settlements into fire-prone areas and extreme fire seasons in recent years make it urgent that we better understand both the physical and human dimensions of managing the risk from wildfire. Wildfire Risk follows from our awareness that increasing public knowledge about wildfire hazard does not necessarily lead to appropriate risk reduction behavior. Drawing heavily upon health and risk communication, and risk modeling, the authors advance our understanding of how individuals and communities respond to wildfire hazard. They present results of original research on the social, economic, and psychological factors in responses to risk, discuss how outreach and education can influence behavior, and consider differences among ethnic/racial groups and between genders with regard to values, views, and attitudes about wildfire risk. They explore the role of public participation in risk assessment and mitigation, as well as in planning for evacuation and recovery after fire. Wildfire Risk concludes with a dedicated section on risk-modeling, with perspectives from decision sciences, geography, operations research, psychology, experimental economics, and other social sciences.

What does it mean to reckon with a contaminated world? In Unmaking the Bomb, Shannon Cram considers the complex social politics of this question and the regulatory infrastructures designed to answer it. Blending history, ethnography, and memoir, she investigates remediation efforts at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a former weapons complex in Washington State. Home to the majority of the nation's high-level nuclear waste and its largest environmental cleanup, Hanford is tasked with managing toxic materials that will long outlast the United States and its institutional capacities. Cram examines the embodied uncertainties and structural impossibilities integral to that endeavor. In particular, this lyrical book engages in a kind of narrative contamination, toggling back and forth between cleanup's administrative frames and the stories that overspill them. It spends time with the statistical people that inhabit cleanup's metrics and models and the nonstatistical people that live with their effects. And, in the process, it explores the uneven social relations that make toxicity a normative condition.

New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice An unsettling journey into the disaster-bound American food system, and an exploration of possible solutions, from leading food politics commentator and former farmer Tom Philpott. More than a decade after Michael Pollan's game-changing The Omnivore's Dilemma transformed the conversation about what we eat, a combination of global diet trends and corporate interests have put American agriculture into a state of "quiet emergency," from dangerous drought in California--which grows more than 50 percent of the fruits and vegetables we eat--to catastrophic topsoil loss in the "breadbasket" heartland of the United States. Whether or not we take heed, these urgent crises of industrial agriculture will define our future. In Perilous Bounty, veteran journalist and former farmer Tom Philpott explores and exposes the small handful of seed and pesticide corporations, investment funds, and magnates who benefit from the trends that imperil us, with on-the-ground dispatches featuring the scientists documenting the damage and the farmers and activists who are valiantly and inventively pushing back. Resource scarcity looms on the horizon, but rather than pointing us toward an inevitable doomsday, Philpott shows how the entire wayward ship of American agriculture could be routed away from its path to disaster. He profiles the farmers and communities in the nation's two key growing regions developing resilient, soil-building, water-smart farming practices, and readying for the climate shocks that are already upon us; and he explains how we can help move these methods from the margins to the mainstream.

The novel The Godfather (1969) and the movie of the same name (1972) entrenched the myth of the Mafiosi as valiant knights, men of honor, and defenders of the traditional concept of family. As a result of this movie and other popular portrayals, the image of mobsters as “men of honor and tradition” has become iconic throughout America. Yet the truth of the matter belies this more noble image. The Mafia is a ruthless organization. Their concept of family is a twisted one. But viewed through the lens of popular culture, it is often difficult to separate the fiction from the reality. Made Men demystifies this image by dismantling the code of honor that Mafiosi live by, including its attendant symbols, rituals, and the lifestyle that it demands. Since the end of World War II, the Mafia in Italy and America has undergone major changes, which are charted by the authors through the present day. Nicaso and Danesi also consider all kinds of related organizations, not only the Italian ones, including the Yakuza, the Triads, and the Russian Mafia. The authors look at organized criminal culture in general, attempting to explain why its symbols, rituals, and practices continue to draw people in, both as literal members, or as consumers of the pop culture that glorifies them. This story traces and decodes the origins, history and success of the mafia in the U.S., bringing a better, and more accurate understanding of this ultimately brutal, violent, and corrupting “family business.” It is a story that has rarely been told in this way, but which is believed, nonetheless, important to tell.