New Releases by Neil Smith

Why have so many central and inner cities in Europe, North America and Australia been so radically revamped in the last three decades, converting urban decay into new chic? Will the process continue in the twenty-first century or has it ended? What does this mean for the people who live there? Can they do anything about it? This book challenges conventional wisdom, which holds gentrification to be the simple outcome of new middle-class tastes and a demand for urban living. It reveals gentrification as part of a much larger shift in the political economy and culture of the late twentieth century. Documenting in gritty detail the conflicts that gentrification brings to the new urban ''frontiers'', the author explores the interconnections of urban policy, patterns of investment, eviction, and homelessness. The failure of liberal urban policy and the end of the 1980s financial boom have made the end-of-the-century city a darker and more dangerous place. Public policy and the private market are conspiring against minorities, working people, the poor, and the homeless as never before. In the emerging revanchist city, gentrification has become part of this policy of revenge.

The recent American invasion of Iraq represents the endgame of America''s decades-old effort to impose its vision of globalization-a system dominated by multinational firms and buttressed by the liberalism of John Locke and Adam Smith. Whereas the war surely ended Saddam Hussein''s regime, the storm of countervailing forces it unleashed points to another end: that of America''s latest global project. This is not the first time that the US has tried to reshape the world in its own liberal image, but the third. The first effort stretched from the late nineteenth century to 1920, ending when America rejected entry into the League of Nations. The FDR administration engineered the second attempt in the 1940s, but it withered in the Cold War. The third moment-the era of globalization-began in the late 1960s, when the US transformed the Bretton Woods financial institutions and used its own economic power to enforce a worldwide neoliberal orthodoxy tied to an ideal of liberal democracy. But the effort is failing for the same reasons the preceding attempts failed. As Neil Smith shows, the Lockean liberalism that animates American globalism has always been undercut by a crippling nationalism that exposes the contradictions built into the ideal. In each instance, a hard-edged nationalism-evident in the rejection of the League of Nations, in the policies of the Cold War, and in the current Iraq war-always surfaces and drives US actions despite America''s self-perception as a champion of benign universal values. Moreover, it always generates opposition. Attuned to history, political economy, and geography, The Endgame of Globalization is a sweeping and powerful account of America''s century-long quest for global dominance and the nationalism within that invariably unravels the dream.

Their last mission . . . For a year Lando Calrissian & Vuffi Raa, his five-armed robot astrogator, had roamed space in the Millennium Falcon,Ó seeking or creating opportunities to turn an easy, but not too dishonest, credit. But now their partnership seemed doomed -- for Lando''s uncharacteristic impulse to help a race of persecuted aliens had suddenly made him & Vuffi vulnerable to several sets of their own enemies . . . not least of whom was the evil Rokur Gepta, the Sorcerer of Tund!

Un escenario singular de la transformación del espacio público que se está produciendo en las ciudades occidentales ha sido Barcelona, cuya política urbanística de los años ochenta, orientada hacia el espacio público, culminó en las transformaciones propiciadas por los Juegos Olímpicos en 1992 y dio lugar a la expresión de «modelo Barcelona». Desde entonces, sin embargo, Barcelona se ha ido enfrentando a importantes cambios en los valores políticos que han dado lugar al nuevo espacio metropolitano. David Harvey es uno de los geógrafos más influyentes de los últimos treinta años. Sus trabajos sobre la geografía humana le han llevado a interesarse por los cambios en política económica, los procesos de urbanización en países capitalistas, las formas alternativas de urbanización y la justicia ambiental. Actualmente es profesor de geografía en la City University of New York (CUNY). Neil Smith es especialista en política económica, urbanismo social e historia y teoría de la geografía, dirige el Centro de Cultura y Política Geográfica en la City University of New York (CUNY) e imparte clases de antropología urbana y cultural. Ha investigado, entre otros temas, aspectos del desarrollo urbano, como el proceso de gentrificación y las pautas de inversión y desinversión que sigue el mercado inmobiliario.

Annotation American Empire challenges our deepest assumptions about the rise of American globalism in the twentieth century and puts geography back into the History of what is called the American Century.

In the North American Confederacy . . . People are free--really free. Free to do as they please, whether it be starting a business, running for elected office, or taking target practice in the back forty. There''s not a whole lot of government, nor is there a lot of crime, because everyone who wants to carries a gun, and isn''t afraid to use it. But someone has bombed the Endicott Building, killing hundreds of people, and Win Bear, the only licensed detective in the confederacy, has to find out who did this dastardly deed, and why. Because whoever did it has already shown their willingness to commit more terrorist acts, no matter how many people are hurt. And that can''t go on, or soon the confederacy will be just as the bad old United States--and that is something they want to avoid at all costs.

Language, Bananas, and Bonobos presents a series of engaging reflections on concerns such as our knowledge and use of language, political correctness, and the linguistic abilities of chimpanzees. In doing so, this volume provides new insights into linguistics that are of universal interest.

The quintessential Libertarian science fiction adventure from the three-time winner of the Prometheus Award, author of The Lando Calrissian Adventures . Denver detective Win Bear, on the trail of a murderer, discovers much more than a killer. He accidentally stumbles upon the probability broach, a portal to a myriad of worlds—some wildly different from, others disconcertingly similar to our own. Win finds himself transported to an alternate Earth where Congress is in Colorado, everyone carries a gun, there are gorillas in the Senate, and public services are controlled by private businesses. "Contained ideas I wish could be shouted to the world, ideas that come from the American heritage of freedom and which could bring still greater individual liberty, greater technical progress." ―Vernor Vinge, three-time Hugo Award-winning author "Pick up a new copy of the book and rediscover this exciting world, and reserve me a table at Meep''s Texas Barbecue." ― Prometheus

Science fiction roman.

When John Greenwood, a Catholic priest from Chicago -- and a liberal "child of the 60s" -- suddenly learns that he''s a Jewish Holocaust orphan, he asks desperately, what does that make him? Is he Catholic or Jewish? American or German? Father Greenwood plunges into a adventuresome search for identity and for truth. Who is right, his pacifist mentors, or his newfound family, some of whom died fighting Hitler? His mind spins as his struggle to find answers, for himself, his foster parents, his real family, and his long lost love, plays out against a background of real events in America and the world today. Everything he ever knew and believed is on trial. Tension builds to a surprise ending in Israel. 245 pages.

Tells the story of the Denver Bronco''s fight to overcome dyslexia, graduate from high school, and become a successful NFL player.

This unique book provides an introductory overview of modern theoretical linguistics which manages to be both accessible and humorous without sacrificing either scholarship of insight. In a series of magisterial vignettes Smith emphasizes the perennial necessity of appealing to linguistic theory if we are to gain any real understanding of the phenomena of language. However profound or however trivial the questions we raise and try answer - What exactly does one have to know to count as a speaker of a language? What would it mean for a language to have no vowels? Why do little children call lorries ''lollies''? Precisely what with this sentence is wrong? - we need to recourse to a theory even to make them coherent. In particular, the author argues that we can find solutions to our puzzles, and explanations for these phenomena, if we exploit on the one hand Chomsky''s theory of Generative Grammar, and on the other Sperber and Wilson''s theory of Relevance.

On a gambling trip to Oseon, the wealthy resort star system, Lando discovers that accidents that nearly destroyed his ship were actually murder attempts by an unknown enemy.

Lando Calrissian - gambler, rogue and con artist. Lando goes out on a limb to help a race of persecuted aliens and finds himself up against several sets of his own enemies.

On a gambling trip to Oseon, the wealthy resort star system, Lando discovers that accidents that nearly destroyed his ship were actually murder attempts by an unknown enemy