The compelling essays in Bernard Quetchenbach’s Accidental Gravity move from upstate New York to the western United States, from urban and suburban places to wild lands. In the first section of the book, he focuses on suburban neighborhoods, where residents respond ambivalently to golf-course geese and other unruly natural presences; in the second section, he juxtaposes these humanized places with Yellowstone National Park. Quetchenbach writes about current environmental issues in the Greater Yellowstone area—wildfire, invasive species, ever-increasing numbers of tourists—in the context of climate change and other contemporary pressures.
 
Accidental Gravity negotiates the difficult edge between a naive belief in an enduring, unassailable natural world and the equally naive belief that human life takes place in some unnatural, more mediated context. The title refers to the accidental but nonetheless meaningful nexus where the personal meets and combines with the universal—those serendipitous moments when the individual life connects to the larger rhythms of time and planet.
 

The thirty-six cases presented in this volume are the pedagogic result of the author’s years working in a pediatrics medical setting. These cases include scenarios that aim to help students improve such skills as evaluating clinical presentations, formulating differential diagnoses, determining appropriate work-ups and interpreting their results, and producing working diagnoses and subsequent treatment plans. The text also examines appropriate responses to emergency situations. The cases come in a variety of formats to give a well-rounded tour of myriad scenarios. Suggested answers provided at the end of each case allow for critical assessment without immediate access to work-up results. This text is essential for those looking to build the critical skills necessary to succeed in the pediatric field.
 
 

Sociopolitical views on housing have been brought to the fore in recent years by economic crises and rises in migration. Through case studies covering a range of geographical contexts, this book’s chapters build a narrative encompassing issues of housing equality, the biopolitics of dwelling and its associated activism, initiatives for social sustainability, and cohabitation of the urban terrain. This volume presents an ethical view of the stakeholders who are typically unaccounted for, thus offering a critique of recent governmental policy on housing access and development.