ONCE UPON A TIME IN ATLANTA ... After losing his dad, a teenager gains the ability to hear the music inside each human soul, allowing him to sense their emotions, see their past memories, and even manipulate their moods. Using his new gift, he vows to carry on his father's legacy and bring his killer to justice. Stephen Kibwaa had a good life and good parents, even if they pushed him hard to do his best. As a gifted pianist, Stephen was sixteen when he was invited to the Georgia Dome to play the National Anthem—but after his show, a human trafficker only known as "The Marxman" murdered Stephen's dad during a failed kidnapping operation. At his father's funeral, Stephen, in his sadness and anger, was gifted with a strange new ability: Suddenly, he was able to hear the song of the souls around him. As 10 years passed by, Stephen worked hard to develop and refine his power, strengthening his body and stopping other human traffickers along the way as Atlanta's shadowed superhero, Dizchord. Now, the past comes back to taunt him as his father's killer, The Marxman, returns to Atlanta ... With themes of grief and loss, duty and honor, and love and sacrifice, Dizchord is an original story set in contemporary Atlanta that tackles issues surrounding family, human trafficking, and growing up from award-winning, genre-hopping author C. S. Johnson. AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is the light novelization of the comic, Dizchord #1. For more information on the comic, please visit C. S. Johnson's website.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1845.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN ATLANTA ... After losing his dad, a teenager gains the ability to hear the music inside each human soul, allowing him to sense their emotions, see their past memories, and even manipulate their moods. Using his new gift, he vows to carry on his father's legacy and bring his killer to justice. Stephen Kibwaa had a good life and good parents, even if they pushed him hard to do his best. As a gifted pianist, Stephen was sixteen when he was invited to the Georgia Dome to play the National Anthem-but after his show, a human trafficker only known as "The Marxman" murdered Stephen's dad during a failed kidnapping operation. At his father's funeral, Stephen, in his sadness and anger, was gifted with a strange new ability: Suddenly, he was able to hear the song of the souls around him. As 10 years passed by, Stephen worked hard to develop and refine his power, strengthening his body and stopping other human traffickers along the way as Atlanta's shadowed superhero, Dizchord. Now, the past comes back to taunt him as his father's killer, The Marxman, returns to Atlanta ... With themes of grief and loss, duty and honor, and love and sacrifice, Dizchord is an original comic set in contemporary Atlanta that tackles issues surrounding family, human trafficking, and growing up from award-winning, genre-hopping author C. S. Johnson. AUTHOR'S NOTE: THIS IS THE LIGHT NOVEL ADAPTATION OF DIZCHORD #1, an original superhero comic from C. S. Johnson. For more information about the comic series, please visit C. S. Johnson's website.

How do international organizations in the United Nations system put together their budgets? What is the role of complex principals - most notably member states - and the complex agents in the bureaucracies of international organizations in budgeting processes? And what does a focus on budgeting tell us about the changing nature of the system of international organizations? This book provides answers to these questions through a detailed examination of budgeting in the UN system. The analysis draws on both quantitative and qualitative observations for a total of 22 UN system organizations and detailed case studies for the United Nations, ILO, UNESCO, and WHO. The findings demonstrate the importance of three key organizational outcomes— proceduralization, routinization, and budgetary segmentation - as international organizations grapple with managing discord over priorities as a result of complex principal— agent constellations. Contrary to a common view of international bureaucracies as pathological organizations, core budget routines are mostly successfully maintained. However, principal constellations become more complex, notably through the rise of voluntary contributions and non-state donors; budgetary segmentation advances, in some cases even leading to the setting up of new international organizations; and budgeting and resource mobilization become ever more intertwined. As a consequence, the capacity of international bureaucracies to fulfil their budgeting responsibilities is stretched to the limits and beyond. Transformations in Governance is a major academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative politics, international relations, public policy, federalism, and environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of authority from central states to supranational institutions, subnational governments, and public-private networks. It brings together work that advances our understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective, containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high quality by leading and emerging scholars. The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.

How to sustain an international system of cooperation in the midst of geopolitical struggle Can the international economic and legal system survive today’s fractured geopolitics? Democracies are facing a drawn-out contest with authoritarian states that is entangling much of public policy with global security issues. In Global Discord, Paul Tucker lays out principles for a sustainable system of international cooperation, showing how democracies can deal with China and other illiberal states without sacrificing their deepest political values. Drawing on three decades as a central banker and regulator, Tucker applies these principles to the international monetary order, including the role of the U.S. dollar, trade and investment regimes, and the financial system. Combining history, economics, and political and legal philosophy, Tucker offers a new account of international relations. Rejecting intellectual traditions that go back to Hobbes, Kant, and Grotius, and deploying instead ideas from David Hume, Bernard Williams, and modern mechanism-design economists, Tucker describes a new kind of political realism that emphasizes power and interests without sidelining morality. Incentives must be aligned with values if institutions are to endure. The connecting tissue for a system of international cooperation, he writes, should be legitimacy, creating a world of concentric circles in which we cooperate more with those with whom we share the most and whom we fear the least.