A University Turns to the World examines the growth of Michigan State University’s pacesetting International program beginning in 1956, when President John Hannah named the nation’s first international dean, Glen Taggart, to head a university-wide effort. In the years that followed, MSU’s technical assistance projects in Asia, Africa, and Latin America were an important contribution to economic growth and development, and they were integral to broad efforts to strengthen the international dimension at home. The faculty members who went to Okinawa, Colombia, Brazil, South Vietnam, and Pakistan in the early years defined important goals and they learned much. As the years passed, their experiences led to increased sensitivity to the complexities of development activity and the need for patience.
     Smuckler’s leadership of the international program and intimate involvement in MSU’s work at home and abroad enable him to recapture the dreams and disappointments of the development promise. Ultimately, Smuckler demonstrates that the development programs of the mid-twentieth century paved the way for valuable new research activities and long-term mutually beneficial ties between MSU faculty and institutions and colleagues overseas.

Intense attention has been paid to Detroit as a site of urban crisis. This crisis, however, has not only yielded the massive devaluation of real estate that has so often been noted; it has also yielded an explosive production of seemingly valueless urban property that has facilitated the imagination and practice of alternative urbanisms. The first sustained study of Detroit’s alternative urban cultures, The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit initiates a new focus on Detroit as a site not only of urban crisis but also of urban possibility.