Urban Nonfiction

Piven and Cloward have updated their classic work on the history and function of welfare to cover the American welfare state's massive erosion during the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton years. The authors present a boldly comprehensive, brilliant new theory to explain the comparative underdevelopment of the US welfare state among advanced industrial nations. Their conceptual framework promises to shape the debate within current and future administrations as they attempt to rethink the welfare system and its role in American society.

Teach yourself escape and evasion tactics! Whether you're a high-profile individual, a tourist, or a random target for an opportunistic criminal, there's a chance you'll be taken. This book is packed with covert military and spy escape techniques adapted for the average person. Learn how to bolster your home security, create a covert escape and survival kit, track a missing person, disappear permanently, escape from restraints, endure captivity until you escape or are rescued, survive a car chase, evade guard dogs, and more. You never know when they will save your life.

The remarkable lengths Ruderman and Laker go to for the story - chasing down witnesses on the city's grimmest streets, sifting through archive boxes and hours of surveillance tape for crucial clues, and coaxing reluctant victims to come forward - put their determination to balance motherhood with the career they love to the ultimate test.