His plane nearly crashed, the cops he'd been hired to train almost killed him, and he ingested a substance that bore a close resemblance to elephant snot - all during his first two days on the job.Micronesian Blues tells the true story of former L.A. street cop Bryan Vila's hilarious road to cross-cultural enlightenment as a police chief in the far Pacific islands of Micronesia.Through lively narrative laced with wry humor, it chronicles his adventures and misadventures on Saipan, Ponape (now Pohnpei), Truk (now Chuuk), Palau, Yap, Kosrae, and Kwajalein. Trial and error was the name of the game in this dubious paradise, where Bryan had to learn the rules - or make them up - as he went. Yet he embraced island life, succeeded in his new role, and ultimately found himself profoundly changed by his experiences in Micronesia and the lessons he learned there.

Training competent, independent police forces in developing nations is critical to U.S. efforts to promote democracy and stability worldwide. Yet all too often we simply take American cops or military troops, drop them into the middle of a foreign land, and leave them to figure out the enormous challenges of cross-cultural police training on their own. Three decades ago, in the tropical island setting of Micronesia, Bryan Vila was one of these trainers. After serving as a Marine in Vietnam and then working as a street cop in the ghettos and barrios of Los Angeles for nine years, he expected the job to be a paid vacation in paradise. He couldn't have been more wrong. Micronesian Blues tells the true story of Bryan's six years directing the development of law enforcement in Micronesia during the tumultuous period when this former U.S. Trust Territory was making the transition to independence. Through lively narrative laced with wry humor, it chronicles his adventures and misadventures as he discovers the do's and don'ts of cross-cultural policing through trial and error on Saipan, Ponape, Truk, Palau, Yap, Kosrae, and Kwajalein. An instructive postscript details the ten most important lessons Bryan learned during his time in Micronesia and how they apply to any cross-cultural police training situation, including today's global hot spots. These lessons make Micronesian Blues more than just an entertaining collection of true adventures—it's an eye-opening read for cops, military personnel of all ranks, public policy-makers, academics, and general audiences alike

Retells sixty-eight traditional legends of the islands, including creation myths and tales of duhendes, dancing trickster elves of the jungle.

Successfully navigate the rich world of travel narratives and identify fiction and nonfiction read-alikes with this detailed and expertly constructed guide. Just as savvy travelers make use of guidebooks to help navigate the hundreds of countries around the globe, smart librarians need a guidebook that makes sense of the world of travel narratives. Going Places: A Reader's Guide to Travel Narratives meets that demand, helping librarians assist patrons in finding the nonfiction books that most interest them. It will also serve to help users better understand the genre and their own reading interests. The book examines the subgenres of the travel narrative genre in its seven chapters, categorizing and describing approximately 600 titles according to genres and broad reading interests, and identifying hundreds of other fiction and nonfiction titles as read-alikes and related reads by shared key topics. The author has also identified award-winning titles and spotlighted further resources on travel lit, making this work an ideal guide for readers' advisors as well a book general readers will enjoy browsing.

Suburban Empire takes readers to the US missile base at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, at the matrix of postwar US imperial expansion, the Cold War nuclear arms race, and the tide of anti-colonial struggles rippling across the world. Hirshberg shows that the displacement of indigenous Marshallese within Kwajalein Atoll mirrors the segregation and spatial politics of the mainland US as local and global iterations of US empire took hold. Tracing how Marshall Islanders navigated US military control over their lands, Suburban Empire reveals that Cold War–era suburbanization was perfectly congruent with US colonization, military testing, and nuclear fallout. The structures of suburban segregation cloaked the destructive history of control and militarism under a veil of small-town innocence.

Every job can lead to stress. How people cope with that stress can be influenced by many factors. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employs a diverse staff that includes emergency responders, border patrol agents, federal air marshals, and policy analysts. These employees may be exposed to traumatic situations and disturbing information as part of their jobs. DHS is concerned that long-term exposure to stressors may reduce individual resilience, negatively affect employees' well-being, and deteriorate the department's level of operation readiness. To explore DHS workforce resilience, the Institute of Medicine hosted two workshops in September and November 2011. The September workshop focused on DHS's operational and law enforcement personnel, while the November workshop concentrated on DHS policy and program personnel with top secret security clearances. The workshop brought together an array of experts from various fields including resilience research, occupation health psychology, and emergency response. Building a Resilient Workforce: Opportunities for the Department of Homeland Security: Workshop Summary: Defines workforce resilience and its benefits such as increased operational readiness and long-term cost savings for the specified population; Identifies work-related stressors faced by DHS workers, and gaps in current services and programs; Prioritizes key areas of concern; and Identifies innovative and effective worker resilience programs that could potentially serve as models for relevant components of the DHS workforce. The report presents highlights from more than 20 hours of presentations and discussions from the two workshops, as well as the agendas and a complete listing of the speakers, panelists, and planning committee members.

This volume presents 19 original essays addressing what is widely regarded as the most serious problem confronting America today and for years to come – terrorism – from the unique perspective of criminology. The chapters collected here address such issues as the prevention of terrorism, the applicability of community policing and routine activities models of crime to the problem of terrorism, how to balance liberty and security, and how to think about and manage the fear of terrorism, as well as the coordination of federal and local efforts to prevent and counter terrorism. Criminologists on Terrorism and Homeland Security will be of interest to anyone concerned about violence prevention in general and terrorism in particular, policing, prosecution, adjudication, sentencing and restorative justice.