Originally published: Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, c2011.

Two men find themselves staring down the dark headlights of a car traveling against the flow of traffic on a major thoroughfare during their ordinarily routine commute home. As a result of the encounter, Sean Smith becomes the wrong-way driver's first victim when he is run off the highway trying to avoid a head-on collision. Minutes later, Charles Washington suffers the same fate just a few miles down the road. When the dust finally settles, one of them is killed and the other is critically injured. While the families of the two men struggle to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, the driver who caused the carnage has simply disappeared into the dead of night. Police discover skid marks from the assailant's car at one accident scene but not the other. Detectives are immediately suspicious that perhaps this was no random accident. They hesitate initially to call it murder. But when it is discovered that one of the victims has had threats made against his life by someone reputed to have ties to organized crime, this affirms for the detectives that they are, in fact, on the right trail. All who are close to the case agree: this method of murder is beyond bizarre.

In July 1861 London newspapers excitedly reported two violent crimes, both the stuff of sensational fiction. One involved a retired army major, his beautiful mistress and her illegitimate child, blackmail and murder. In the other, a French nobleman was accused of trying to kill his son in order to claim the young man's inheritance. The press covered both cases with thoroughness and enthusiasm, narrating events in a style worthy of a popular novelist, and including lengthy passages of testimony. Not only did they report rumor as well as what seemed to be fact, they speculated about the credibility of witnesses, assessed character, and decided guilt. The public was enthralled. Richard D. Altick demonstrates that these two cases, as they were presented in the British press, set the tone for the Victorian "age of sensation." The fascination with crime, passion, and suspense has a long history, but it was in the 1860s that this fascination became the vogue in England. Altick shows that these crimes provided literary prototypes and authenticated extraordinary passion and incident in fiction with the "shock of actuality." While most sensational melodramas and novels were by lesser writers, authors of the stature of Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Trollope, Hardy, and Wilkie Collins were also influenced by the spirit of the age and incorporated sensational elements in their work.

In 1995, the mutilated body of a female tourist is found in the hills overlooking Heidelberg. By 1997, three more female tourists have been brutally murdered. The media accuse Police Commissioner Kurt Schiller and Inspector Stefan Krupp of incompetence, and demand that they resign. So far, the motive for the deaths is sketchy, but the consensus is clear. Someone is trying to scare tourists away, but no one knows who or why.Most of the murders occur during springtime festivals, and most of the bodies are found in the hills above Heidelberg, except the latest one, which is found outside a US military installation near Seckenheim. This raises more questions since, besides location, there are other inconsistencies that cannot be explained.Inspector Krupp is faced with a puzzling dilemma. Is a clever killer trying to confuse the police, or are there two vicious killers on the loose with different motives? Soon, when a fifth victim is discovered, and a sixth is identified as a possible next one, Krupp must accept what his seasoned instincts tell him. The killer is someone he knows. Now, he must prove what he suspects before another innocent victim is killed...or he is.

Quiet pleasant communities, sparkling under the clear blue skies of Alberta, have witnessed bloody murders and violent mayhem. From a wide variety of accounts, Babara Smith has selected eight intriguing stories that will astound and amaze you. Mystery still surrounds the fate of pro golfer Frank Willey who disappeared in 1962. Two men were convicted of his murder, but his body has never been found. No suspect, however, was ever found in the case of MaryAnn Plett. The pretty, young real-estate agent disappeared after going to show a property to a client — but some skeletal remains were discovered seven months later. In 1948, a family could hardly have guessed that their newly purchased home would come complete with a corpse; and, in another case, Winnie Wanner's bathroom was found splattered with blood. Although her estranged husband was seen leaving the apartment with a suspiciously large bag, Winnie vanished from the face of the earth. These chilling tales, previously little known outside Alberta, also include matters of greed, rum running, shoot-outs, and hostages. They will be every bit as fascinating to the crime buff as those found anywhere.

After two marriages, one good and one cataclysmic, Paul Dexter begins to hide under a turtle-shell-veneer to guard against any woman inveigling her way into his reclusive lifestyle. Even though his business exposes him to lustful temptations, Paul is the devout nonconformist and evades all relationships with women. While vacationing in Panama City, Florida, he is teased by a curvaceous woman who does everything but seduce him. Although tempted, Paul flees to avoid anymore sexual overtures. He is blithely unaware that he has evaded a fatal encounter with an audacious serial killer. Five years later, he is contacted by the same woman. This time though, he succumbs to the ravages of celibacy fatigue, and settles into what he thinks is an idyllic marriage. But when Paul slowly begins to discover his wife’s nefarious past, he worries whether he will become another victim.

This collection of texts is a first step towards providing a theoretical and methodological platform for the study of social encounters. The social encounter is a particular sort of concept, focusing on confusion, tension, trauma, and possibly social change that may emerge in situations of contact when people and things interact. A social encounter is, however, not only about negotiation or contemplating existence, but is rather about what happens when people interact actively, when they involve themselves with people and materialities, when they move around, fetch things, use things, leave things etc. The repeated social encounter is often a confrontation with something, such as an opinion, a performance, or with materialities and the effects are often unpredictable. Encounters may reproduce a social pattern, but also contain potential for transformation and change. Such varied responses to encounters will certainly have effects on the archaeological record. The primary focus of the volume is the effects and processes involved in intra- and inter-societal encounters. The collection hence fills a theoretical and methodological gap in the study of the encounter in archaeology. There is a need for elaborating aspects of postcolonial theory in order to develop new ways of approaching the archaeological record. The articles of this volume include examples from various regions and time periods. They range from Scandinavian Stone Age, through Buddhist social practices of the first millennium AD, Maya warfare and ideology, to Aboriginal-European encounters in 20th century Australia.Per Cornell (PhD, Ass. Prof.) is currently lecturer at the Department of archaeology, University of Gothenburg. Cornell has been involved in extensive field-work in Latin America and current research topics include settlement archaeology, formation processes and social theory. Among his recent books are Local, Regional, Global, co-edited with Per Stenborg (Gotarc, 2004).

In Force Under Pressure, Dr. Lawrence Blum, who has devoted his life's work to the survival and wellness of "those who serve," describes the sources of danger, injuries, and victory to police officers in a down-to-earth, readable style. Blum argues that there are missing "ingredients" in the training and socialization of police officers. These ingredients include techniques and tools to condition the officer's decision-making and concentration during conditions of emergency; internal controls necessary to maintain the will to survive; and aids that will prevent officers being defeated by any threat. Distressing and/or disturbing physical and psychological reactions are common in a police officer's workday, and the officer must be prepared for them. Blum's work has uncovered many of the casues of compromise to officer safety and wellness, and he contends that police officers will be well prepared to cope with unanticipated or rapidly changing encounters if they possess the right tools and the know-how to command and control field encounters and life's pressures. Here Blum provides practical tools for survival in law enforcement, by combining his clinical knowledge with true stories of police officers for an attention-grabbing and informative book.

Argues that North American settler colonialism included episodes of genocide of Indigenous peoples as defined by the United Nations Genocide Convention.

“Hold tight. The way to go mad without losing your mind is sometimes unruly.” So begins La Marr Jurelle Bruce's urgent provocation and poignant meditation on madness in black radical art. Bruce theorizes four overlapping meanings of madness: the lived experience of an unruly mind, the psychiatric category of serious mental illness, the emotional state also known as “rage,” and any drastic deviation from psychosocial norms. With care and verve, he explores the mad in the literature of Amiri Baraka, Gayl Jones, and Ntozake Shange; in the jazz repertoires of Buddy Bolden, Sun Ra, and Charles Mingus; in the comedic performances of Richard Pryor and Dave Chappelle; in the protest music of Nina Simone, Lauryn Hill, and Kendrick Lamar, and beyond. These artists activate madness as content, form, aesthetic, strategy, philosophy, and energy in an enduring black radical tradition. Joining this tradition, Bruce mobilizes a set of interpretive practices, affective dispositions, political principles, and existential orientations that he calls “mad methodology.” Ultimately, How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind is both a study and an act of critical, ethical, radical madness.