Writing the perfect complement to their bestseller, Introducing Public Administration, Shafritz and Borick highlight the great drama inherent in public policy -- and the ingenuity of its makers and administrators -- in this new casebook that brings thrilling, true life adventures in public administration to life in an engaging, witty style. Drawing on a unique assortment of literary, historic, and modern examples, Cases in Public Policy and Administration exposes students to public administration in practice by telling the tales of: How Thurgood Marshall led the legal fight for civil rights and made it possible for Barack Obama to become president How the ideas of an academic economist and a famous novelist led to the recession that started in 2008 How Al Gore really deserves just a little bit of credit for inventing the Internet How the decision was made by President Harry Truman to drop the first atomic bomb on Japan in order to end World War II How the current American welfare state was inspired by a German chancellor How a Nazi war criminal inadvertently provided the world with a lesson in bureaucratic ethics How Napoleon Bonaparte encouraged the job of chief of staff to escape from the military and live in contemporary civilian offices How an obscure state department bureaucrat wrote the policy of containment that allowed the United States to win the Cold War with the Soviet Union How Dwight D. Eisenhower was started on the road to the presidency by a mentor he found in the Panamanian rain forest How Florence Nightingale gathered statistics during the Crimean War that helped lead to contemporary program evaluation.

At a time when food is becoming increasingly scarce in many parts of the world and food prices are skyrocketing, no industry is more important than agriculture. Humans have been farming for thousands of years, and yet agriculture has undergone more fundamental changes in the past 80 years than in the previous several centuries. In 1900, 30 million American farmers tilled the soil or tended livestock; today there are fewer than 4.5 million farmers who feed a population four times larger than it was at the beginning of the century. Fifty years ago, the planet could not have sustained a population of 6.5 billion; now, commercial and industrial agriculture ensure that millions will not die from starvation. Farmers are able to feed an exponentially growing planet because the greatest industrial revolution in history has occurred in agriculture since 1929, with U.S. farmers leading the way. Productivity on American farms has increased tenfold, even as most small farmers and tenants have been forced to find other work. Today, only 300,000 farms produce approximately ninety percent of the total output, and overproduction, largely subsidized by government programs and policies, has become the hallmark of modern agriculture. A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929 charts the profound changes in farming that have occurred during author Paul K. Conkin's lifetime. His personal experiences growing up on a small Tennessee farm complement compelling statistical data as he explores America's vast agricultural transformation and considers its social, political, and economic consequences. He examines the history of American agriculture, showing how New Deal innovations evolved into convoluted commodity programs following World War II. Conkin assesses the skills, new technologies, and government policies that helped transform farming in America and suggests how new legislation might affect farming in decades to come. Although the increased production and mechanization of farming has been an economic success story for Americans, the costs are becoming increasingly apparent. Small farmers are put out of business when they cannot compete with giant, non-diversified corporate farms. Caged chickens and hogs in factory-like facilities or confined dairy cattle require massive amounts of chemicals and hormones ultimately ingested by consumers. Fertilizers, new organic chemicals, manure disposal, and genetically modified seeds have introduced environmental problems that are still being discovered. A Revolution Down on the Farm concludes with an evaluation of farming in the twenty-first century and a distinctive meditation on alternatives to our present large scale, mechanized, subsidized, and fossil fuel and chemically dependent system.

"Gardner documents both the economic difficulties that have confronted farmers and the technological and economic transformations that have lifted them from relative poverty to economic parity with the nonfarm population. He provides a detailed analysis of the causes behind these trends, with emphasis on the role of government action"--Jacket

The decade since the World War has been in many ways the most extraordinary period in American agriculture. For the first time in the Nation's history, the census of 1925 showed a decrease (since 1920) in crop acreage, in farm animals, in number of farms, and in farm population. Nevertheless, agricultural production increased more rapidly from 1922 to 1926, inclusive, than in any period since 1900, and probably since 1890, when the agricultural occupation of the prairies approached completion.

A supplemental textbook for middle and high school students, Hoosiers and the American Story provides intimate views of individuals and places in Indiana set within themes from American history. During the frontier days when Americans battled with and exiled native peoples from the East, Indiana was on the leading edge of America’s westward expansion. As waves of immigrants swept across the Appalachians and eastern waterways, Indiana became established as both a crossroads and as a vital part of Middle America. Indiana’s stories illuminate the history of American agriculture, wars, industrialization, ethnic conflicts, technological improvements, political battles, transportation networks, economic shifts, social welfare initiatives, and more. In so doing, they elucidate large national issues so that students can relate personally to the ideas and events that comprise American history. At the same time, the stories shed light on what it means to be a Hoosier, today and in the past.