“A haunted, haunting examination of mental illness and murder in a more or less ordinary American city…Mature and thoughtful…A Helter Skelter for our time, though without a hint of sensationalism—unsettling in the extreme but written with confidence and deep empathy” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). On March 11, 2003, in Brownsville, Texas—one of America’s poorest cities—John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho murdered their three young children. The apartment building in which the brutal crimes took place was already run down, and in their aftermath a consensus developed in the community that it should be destroyed. In 2008, journalist Laura Tillman covered the story for The Brownsville Herald. The questions it raised haunted her and set her on a six-year inquiry into the larger significance of such acts, ones so difficult to imagine or explain that their perpetrators are often dismissed as monsters alien to humanity. Tillman spoke with the lawyers who tried the case, the family’s neighbors and relatives and teachers, even one of the murderers: John Allen Rubio himself, whom she corresponded with for years and ultimately met in person. Her investigation is “a dogged attempt to understand what happened, a review of the psychological, sociological and spiritual explanations for the crime…a meditation on the death penalty and on the city of Brownsville” Star Tribune (Minneapolis). The result is a brilliant exploration of some of our age’s most important social issues and a beautiful, profound meditation on the truly human forces that drive them. “This thought-provoking…book exemplifies provocative long-form journalism that does not settle for easy answers” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

This is but a glimpse at that struggle and how it not only impacted men and their families but a way of life that can still be seen in many parts of Florida if one is willing to take time and look. Cowboys still saddle their horses and drive to an old set of cow pens and spend many an hour atop their favorite horse gathering, working and selling a new calf crop. They string miles of barbed wire and drive thousands of staples in fence rows built by their grandfathers and great grandfathers. To many, thou, it is lost and only a fading dream. Deep in the soul of Florida lies a great heritage called the True Florida Cracker. Not the urbanized rednecks that can afford a pair of Wrangler jeans, a shiny belt buckle, a fancy felt hat and black pointed toed cowboy boots but the true country boy and girl. Those who know the reason why you carry a pocket knife, how to keep it sharp and not cut yourself. Those who can appreciate a good pot of collard greens without the sweet cornbread you buy in a box. Those who are not afraid of taking a firm hold on a catfish as it flops around and taking out the hook without getting stuck. To those who had actually stepped into a fresh pile of cow crap and knows what it smells like and in a way appreciates the experience. To those who were taught to say yes mam and no sir and remember what respect is. To those who say to themselves that they were born in the wrong time.

The Long Shadow investigates the purposes and roles of nuclear weapons in the new security environment, the nature and content of the national nuclear strategies of relevant states, and their implications for international security and stability in the Asian security region

We have seen these children—the shy and the sociable, the cautious and the daring—and wondered what makes one avoid new experience and another avidly pursue it. At the crux of the issue surrounding the contribution of nature to development is the study that Jerome Kagan and his colleagues have been conducting for more than two decades. In The Long Shadow of Temperament, Kagan and Nancy Snidman summarize the results of this unique inquiry into human temperaments, one of the best-known longitudinal studies in developmental psychology. These results reveal how deeply certain fundamental temperamental biases can be preserved over development. Identifying two extreme temperamental types—inhibited and uninhibited in childhood, and high-reactive and low-reactive in very young babies—Kagan and his colleagues returned to these children as adolescents. Surprisingly, one of the temperaments revealed in infancy predicted a cautious, fearful personality in early childhood and a dour mood in adolescence. The other bias predicted a bold childhood personality and an exuberant, sanguine mood in adolescence. These personalities were matched by different biological properties. In a masterly summary of their wide-ranging exploration, Kagan and Snidman conclude that these two temperaments are the result of inherited biologies probably rooted in the differential excitability of particular brain structures. Though the authors appreciate that temperamental tendencies can be modified by experience, this compelling work—an empirical and conceptual tour-de-force—shows how long the shadow of temperament is cast over psychological development.

The year is 1916 and twenty-year-old Poppy Barlow is clearing the desk of her late father when she comes across a faded photograph of her father with his two sisters - aunts that Poppy never knew she had - along with their address. Poppy contacts her aunts, and is thrilled when they invite her to stay with them in Sheffield. But while Dale House might look grand from the outside, on closer inspection, the place is run-down and crumbling. Poppy determines to change all this and applies for a job at the local scythe works - to the horror of her aunts. As Poppy learns to survive, she is tormented by many unanswered questions. Why had her father rejected Dale House? Why had he never mentioned his sisters or the past? And what could have happened between her aunts and Frederick Kenton, her new boss, that could cause them so much anguish every time his name, or the scythe works, is mentioned?