In The Two Faces of Fear, Ana Villareal provides an in-depth study of how people live in a high-violence environment, drawing on two years of qualitative fieldwork conducted during a violent turf war in her hometown of Monterrey, Mexico. More broadly, Villareal puts forth a new approach to the study of fear and provides tangible evidence of how quickly fear worsens class, gender, race, and urban inequality beyond Mexico and the "war on drugs."

"The Two Faces of Fear draws on two years of qualitative fieldwork conducted during a violent turf war in urban Mexico to reveal how fear both isolates and further concentrates people and resources deepening inequality. Fear is a powerful polarizer. It deepens classism and racism in everyday relations. It also quickly aggravates socio-spatial inequality. In Monterrey, Mexico, fear accelerated the spatial concentration of urban wealth within one of its municipalities-San Pedro, one of the wealthiest in Latin America-where nightlife and public space thrived as both were obliterated elsewhere. More broadly, the book puts forth a new approach to the study of emotion as a problem and as a process, centering the experience, practices, and resources of those who fear. Fear may pose similar problems for all at the onset of a crisis but as people draw on vastly unequal resources to recreate their lives, they widen the gaps"--

New York Times bestselling author John Saul is a master at writing novels that chill the bones, curdle the blood, and tap into our darkest fears. He creates characters so real that you’ll feel as if they’re friends or family, and throws them into situations so terrifying that you won’t be able to look away until you turn the final page. Now, in Faces of Fear, Saul proves that there’s a fine line between perfection and madness. Fifteen-year-old Alison Shaw may not be beautiful, but she doesn’t really care: She’d much rather read a good book than primp in front of a mirror anyway. But Alison’s gorgeous mother, Risa, knows that beauty can be a key to success and wishes only the best for her daughter, especially when Risa marries a widowed plastic surgeon and moves Alison from Santa Monica to Bel Air. Beauty may be only skin deep, but to the denizens of Bel Air it means the world. Everywhere mother and daughter look, they are surrounded by beautiful people, many of whom have benefited from the skills of Alison’s new stepfather, the charismatic Peter Dunn. Peter is certain he can turn Alison into a vision of loveliness, and Risa–drawn in by his cool confidence–is delighted. Reluctantly, Alison agrees to undergo the first procedure, and her transformation begins. But soon Alison discovers a picture of Peter’s first wife. To Alison’s horror, she notices a resemblance between the image in the photo and the work her stepfather is doing on her. Though Risa refuses to acknowledge the strange similarity, Alison becomes increasingly frightened. Digging further into her stepfather’s murky past, Alison uncovers dark secrets–and even darker motives–and realizes that her worst fears are fast becoming her reality.

By the mid-21st Century, technology had become much too complicated for humans to handle -- and the computer network that had grown up to keep civilization from tripping over its own shoelaces was also beginning to be overwhelmed. Something Had To Be Done.As a solution, Raymond Dyer's project developed the first genuinely self-aware artificial intelligence -- code name: Spartacus. But could Spartacus be trusted to obey its makers? And if it went rogue, could it be shut down? As an acid test, Spartacus was put in charge of a space station and programmed with a survival instinct. Dyer and his team had the job of seeing how far the computer would go to defend itself when they tried to pull the plug. Dyer didn't expect any serious problems to arise in the experiment.Unfortunately, he had built more initiative into Spartacus than he realized....And a superintelligent computer with a high dose of initiative makes a dangerous guinea pig.

The Two Faces of American Freedom boldly reinterprets the American political tradition from the colonial period to modern times, placing issues of race relations, immigration, and presidentialism in the context of shifting notions of empire and citizenship. Today, while the U.S. enjoys tremendous military and economic power, citizens are increasingly insulated from everyday decision-making. This was not always the case. America, Aziz Rana argues, began as a settler society grounded in an ideal of freedom as the exercise of continuous self-rule—one that joined direct political participation with economic independence. However, this vision of freedom was politically bound to the subordination of marginalized groups, especially slaves, Native Americans, and women. These practices of liberty and exclusion were not separate currents, but rather two sides of the same coin. However, at crucial moments, social movements sought to imagine freedom without either subordination or empire. By the mid-twentieth century, these efforts failed, resulting in the rise of hierarchical state and corporate institutions. This new framework presented national and economic security as society’s guiding commitments and nurtured a continual extension of America’s global reach. Rana envisions a democratic society that revives settler ideals, but combines them with meaningful inclusion for those currently at the margins of American life.