A beautiful collection of verse--both light and dark, elegiac and affirmative--from one of our most admired poets. The title Nothing by Design is taken from Salter's villanelle "Complaint for Absolute Divorce," in which we're asked to entertain the thought of a no-fault universe. The wary search for peace, personal and public, is a constant theme in poems as varied as "Our Friends the Enemy," about the Christmas football match between German and British soldiers in 1914; "The Afterlife," in which Egyptian tomb figurines labor to serve the dead; and "Voice of America," where Salter returns to the Saint Petersburg of her exiled friend, the late Joseph Brodsky. A section of charming light verse serves as counterpoint to another series entitled "Bed of Letters," in which Salter addresses the end of a long marriage. Artfully designed, with a highly intentional music, these poems movingly give form to the often unfathomable, yet very real, presence of nothingness and loss in our lives.

Master storyteller Chris Offutt's acclaimed crime series has been praised by Ian Rankin as "righteous Kentucky noir with top notes of Daniel Woodrell and S. A. Cosby," and in this breakneck new novel, sheriff Mick Hardin navigates the treacherous terrain of a town's festering secrets and the violent forces who want to keep them hidden Lauded as a "masterclass in the craft of crime fiction" (CrimeReads), Chris Offutt's beloved and critically acclaimed Mick Hardin series is an atmospheric, tightly crafted testament to Southern noir. The Reluctant Sheriff is a dark, bracing return to the hills of eastern Kentucky where secrets roil beneath the surface, and nothing and no one stays in the past for long. Mick Hardin never wanted to be sheriff. An ex-Army CID officer, he's supposed to be retired--or he was until his sister, Linda, was shot in the line of duty, requiring him to step in as interim sheriff while she recovered. Now he's stuck in Rocksalt, the place he was most hoping to escape. Back in uniform, Mick is chafing at the sudden dissolution of his retirement plans, wearied by the petty squabbles of Rocksalt's townsfolk. It's all business as usual, until the murder of a local bar owner draws an unlikely suspect who threatens to fan the flames of Mick's past. When two more bodies turn up, seemingly unconnected to the first, Mick is forced to reckon with the mysterious circumstances of a case not so open-and-shut as everyone believes. Meanwhile, Linda is slowly healing when a familiar business tycoon with a vested interest in her returning as sheriff makes it difficult for her to remain on the sidelines. Unflinching and devilishly compulsive, The Reluctant Sheriff is an explosive thriller confirming Chris Offutt as a Southern writer of muscular prose and unrivaled talent.

Haass, chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes a brilliant, optimistic analysis of the opportunity that current global politics present to the USA.

A study of imperialism that stretches from ancient Rome to the post-Cold War world and focuses on the Vietnam War, this provocative work boldly revises our assumptions about the genealogy of the West.

An analysis of the role of the interplay between formality and informality in shaping the current state of international law.

The governance of post-conflict territories embodies a central contradiction: how does one help a population prepare for democratic governance and the rule of law by imposing a form of benevolent autocracy? Transitional administrations represent the most complex operations attempted by the United Nations. The operations in East Timor and Kosovo are commonly seen as unique in the history of the UN--perhaps never to be repeated. But they may also be seen as the latest in a series of operations that have involved the United Nations in 'state-building' activities, where it has attempted to develop the institutions of government by assuming some or all of those sovereign powers on a temporary basis. The circumstances that have demanded such interventions certainly will be repeated. Seen in the context of earlier UN operations, such as those in Namibia, Cambodia, and Eastern Slavonia, the view that these exceptional circumstances may not recur is somewhat disingenuous. Moreover, the need for such policy research has been brought into sharp focus by the weighty but ambiguous role assigned to the UN in Afghanistan and the possibility of a comparable role in Iraq. This book fills that gap. Aimed at policy-makers, diplomats, and a wide academic audience (including international relations, political science, international law, and war studies), the book provides a concise history of UN state-building operations and a treatment of the five key issues confronting such an operation on the ground: peace and security, the role of the UN as government, judicial reconstruction, economic reconstruction, and exit strategies.