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An incisive philosophical examination of reparations claims within today’s political and legal landscapes.

For generations, Black Americans have demanded reparations, and, for generations, the US government has ignored or denied these claims. In Calling State Power to Account, Jennifer M. Page puts forward a novel case for reparations owed to Black Americans for slavery, Jim Crow, and subsequent injustices.

Navigating conflicting insights that reparations are owed for blameworthy wrongdoing and that present iniquities to Black Americans are structural rather than the result of intentional offenses by a clearly identifiable party, Page theorizes how unredressed state-sponsored injustices can be the basis of present reparative duties. Split into two parts, the book first makes a philosophical case for reparations before then examining reparations from both legal and political perspectives. This analysis includes considering practical challenges to reparations, such as the limits of legal accountability in a system with formal barriers designed to shield the government from liability. Despite formidable obstacles, Page argues that there is deep moral and democratic significance to the pursuits of reparations claimants. The aim of reparations is not only monetary compensation but also a moral reckoning and assertion of equality against the backdrop of social and political inequalities.

In the rural America of the past, a woman's reputation was sometimes made by her cherry pie—or her chocolate layer cake, or her biscuits. As America modernized and as women left the home, entered the paid labor force, and battled their way to success in the professions, mastery of cooking remained an accepted sign that a woman took her gendered responsibilities seriously. Ironically, over the course of the twentieth century, as ready-made foods and kitchen appliances made home cooking less essential and labor-intensive, skill in the kitchen continued to be perceived not only by society but often by women themselves as a measure of a woman's true value. 

This book shows how cooking developed and evolved during the twentieth century. From Fannie Farmer to Julia Child, new challenges arose to replace the old. Women found themselves still tied to the kitchen, but for different reasons and with the need to acquire new skills. Instead of simply providing sustenance for the family, they now had to master more complex cooking techniques, the knowledge of “ethnic” cuisines, the science of nutrition, the business of consumerism, and, perhaps most important of all, the art of keeping their husbands and children happy and healthy.

Winner of the 2026 Missouri Conference on History Book Award; the 2026 Missouri History Book Award; and shortlisted for the 2026 ASU Humanities Book Award

On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown and a friend were walking down Canfield Drive, a residential street in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. There, they encountered Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson. Moments later, Brown was dead on the street—shot by Wilson at least six times. That evening, a memorial appeared on the pavement where he had fallen. In the days that followed, vigils turned into protests, and protests into an Uprising, as police in riot gear faced off with a grieving, outraged community. For nearly two weeks, Ferguson commanded the nation’s attention. The killing of Michael Brown was an outrage and it should not have happened. But Canfield Drive was primed for tragedy long before that fatal encounter because the street was already a place of racial conflict. This was no accident. 
 
Canfield Drive: A History of Race and the American City on a Street in St. Louis uncovers the deeper history behind the street where Brown died, tracing how race and the built environment have long intersected in St. Louis—from the city’s founding to the Ferguson Uprising. The book follows the story of Black space across two centuries: from early Black communities, to the birth of the St. Louis Blues, to the Halcyon days of The Ville, to the destruction of Mill Creek Valley, to the tragedy of Pruitt-Igoe, and to the construction of Canfield Drive. Though Canfield Drive is the first comprehensive history of St. Louis’s Black urban landscape, it is more than just St. Louis's story. Canfield Drive details the racial engineering of the American city. Here is the machinery of American segregation laid bare: occupancy covenants, court decisions, racial steering, white flight, public housing, voucher systems, and predatory policing that combine to transform neighborhoods into traps. Here too are the people who fought back, building community against staggering odds and securing civil rights reforms that transformed America's understanding of government's obligations to its citizens.
 
Canfield Drive provides a powerful lens on the national story of race and the American city and reveals how Michael Brown's death was not just one officer's deadly decision, but the inevitable outcome of America's built environment—a tragedy centuries in the making, on a street designed for violence. This is how a place becomes a powder keg. This is how history erupts into headlines. This is the story behind the story that America couldn't look away from. This is the story of how a street came to matter, and how it came to stand for something far greater than itself.

A wide-ranging examination of how policies, parties, and labor strength affect inequality in post-industrial societies.

Not all countries are unequal in the same ways or to the same degree. In Challenging Inequality, Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens analyze different patterns of increasing income inequality in post-industrial societies since the 1980s, assessing the policies and social structures best able to mitigate against the worst effects of market inequality. Combining statistical data analysis from twenty-two countries with a comparative historical analysis of Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the United States, Huber and Stephens identify the factors that drive increases in inequality and shape persistent, marked differences between countries. Their statistical analysis confirms generalizable patterns and in-depth country studies help to further elucidate the processes at work.

Challenging Inequality shows how the combination of globalization and skill-biased technological change has led to both labor market dualization and rising unemployment levels, which in turn have had important effects on inequality and poverty. Labor strength—at both the society level and the enterprise level—has helped to counter rising market income inequality, as has a history of strong human capital spending. The generosity of the welfare state remains the most important factor shaping redistribution, while the consistent power of left parties is the common denominator behind both welfare state generosity and human capital investment.

Simon Pirani investigates the interaction of power, money and people in Russia during the presidencies of Vladimir Putin and his successor Dmitry Medvedev.

Profiling the Putin team, including contingents from the security services and pro-market economic "reformers", Pirani argues that the economic growth it presided over during the oil boom was one-sided. The gap between rich and poor widened. Now the boom is over, inequalities will multiply further. As well as explaining Russia's economic trajectory, the book provides a unique account of the social movements that are working against an increasingly authoritarian government to change Russia for the better.

This is the perfect introduction for undergraduates approaching Russia for the first time and those who wish to know how Russia will change during the economic crisis.

Questions increasingly dominant urban planning orthodoxies and whether they truly serve everyday city dwellers

What makes some cities world class? Increasingly, that designation reflects the use of a toolkit of urban planning practices and policies that circulates around the globe. These strategies—establishing creative districts dedicated to technology and design, “greening” the streets, reinventing historic districts as tourist draws—were deployed to build a globally competitive Buenos Aires after its devastating 2001 economic crisis. In this richly drawn account, Jacob Lederman explores what those efforts teach us about fast-evolving changes in city planning practices and why so many local officials chase a nearly identical vision of world-class urbanism.

Lederman explores the influence of Northern nongovernmental organizations and multilateral agencies on a prominent city of the global South. Using empirical data, keen observations, and interviews with people ranging from urban planners to street vendors he explores how transnational best practices actually affect the lives of city dwellers. His research also documents the forms of resistance enacted by everyday residents and the tendency of local institutions and social relations to undermine the top-down plans of officials. Most important, Lederman highlights the paradoxes of world-class urbanism: for instance, while the priorities identified by international agencies are expressed through nonmarket values such as sustainability, inclusion, and livability, local officials often use market-centric solutions to pursue them. Further, despite the progressive rhetoric used to describe urban planning goals, in most cases their result has been greater social, economic, and geographic stratification.

Chasing World-Class Urbanism is a much-needed guide to the intersections of culture, ideology, and the realities of twenty-first-century life in a major Latin American city, one that illuminates the tension between technocratic aspirations and lived experience. 

A powerful, data-driven investigation into how race, geography, and community shape the reporting and response to child abuse in Alabama.

Child Abuse in the Deep South is a groundbreaking examination of how child maltreatment is reported, confirmed, and understood in Alabama—a state shaped by deep historical, racial, and geographic divides. Drawing on over 7,000 case reports, this study reveals how factors such as race, community size, and regional culture influence the identification and handling of abuse cases. With a focus on both rural and urban settings, the book uncovers patterns of systemic bias, underreporting, and institutional response that have long gone unaddressed.

Through rigorous data analysis and a compassionate lens, this work challenges assumptions about child welfare in the American South and offers critical insights for policymakers, social workers, legal professionals, and scholars. Child Abuse in the Deep South is both a call to action and a vital resource for understanding the intersection of social justice, public policy, and child protection in one of the nation’s most complex regions.

Child Abuse in the Deep South provides a quantitative benchmark that investigators and policy-makers will find invaluable on the path to defining at-risk populations, effective interventions, and treatments.
 
 

Recently, childfree people have been foregrounded in mainstream media. More than seven percent of Western women choose to remain childfree and this figure is increasing. Being childfree challenges the ‘procreation imperative’ residing at the center of our hetero-normative understandings, occupying an uneasy position in relation to—simultaneously—traditional academic ideologies and prevalent social norms. After all, as Adi Avivi recognizes, "if a woman is not a mother, the patriarchal social order is in danger." This collection engages with these (mis)perceptions about childfree people: in media representations, demographics, historical documents, and both psychological and philosophical models. Foundational pieces from established experts on the childfree choice--Rhonny Dam, Laurie Lisle, Christopher Clausen, and Berenice Fisher--appear alongside both activist manifestos and original scholarly work, comprehensively brought together. Academics and activists in various disciplines and movements also riff on the childfree life: its implications, its challenges, its conversations, and its agency—all in relation to its inevitability in the 21st century. Childfree across the Disciplines unequivocally takes a stance supporting the subversive potential of the childfree choice, allowing readers to understand childfreedom as a sense of continuing potential in who—or what—a person can become.

Examines Miami’s turbulent transformation from a segregated vacation destination to a global, multicultural metropolis

City of Hope, City of Rage gives a fascinating account of three turbulent and transformative decades in the history of Miami. Marked by mass immigration, racially motivated uprisings, economic inequity, rising crime, and social change, Miami’s history from 1968 to 1994 saw the city evolve rapidly from a predominantly white southern city and vacation spot into a global, Hispanic-majority metropolis with an international tourist base. And yet Miami remains highly segregated today.

Exploring beyond the clichés of the Magic City as a bastion of hope for immigrants, a fantasy of beaches and art deco architecture, or a hotbed of drugs and crime, historian Seth A. Weitz reveals the social, political, and cultural shifts that transformed the city. Utilizing archival research and personal stories to reveal the diverse experiences of Miami’s Black, Latinx, Jewish, and LGBTQ+ communities, Weitz explores the struggles for social justice, the rise of the drug trade, and the ongoing fight to mold Miami’s image.

A Miami native, Weitz challenges simplistic narratives about the city, revealing a place defined by hope, rage, and struggle for identity. Illuminating the way Miami is defined and who gets to define it, City of Hope, City of Rage offers a fresh perspective on this vibrant and complex city, making it a valuable resource for anyone interested in Miami’s unique history.