Broken Circle recounts “The Chokecherry Massacre,” in which three New Mexico high-school students were charged with the murder of two Navajo Indian men, causing a violent, racial street riot that prompted the governor to call out the National Guard. The tensions between whites and Native Americans reached a high in the town of Farmington, New Mexico when three white high school students brutally tortured and killed helpless victims from the neighboring Navajo reservation. As the town erupted into a violent, racial street riot and the courts went easy on the sentencing of the high school boys, Barker tells how Navajo militants sought out justice for years of injustice and oppression in response. An illuminating work of contemporary history, The Broken Circle reveals both sides of a dramatic and painful conflict and a turning point in the struggle for Native American rights.

Evoking Krakauer's Into the Wild, Dan Schultz tells the extraordinary true story of desperado survivalists, a brutal murder, and vigilante justice set against the harsh backdrop of the Colorado wilderness On a sunny May morning in 1998 in Cortez, Colorado, three desperados in a stolen truck opened fire on the town cop, shooting him twenty times; then they blasted their way past dozens of police cars and disappeared into 10,000 square miles of the harshest wilderness terrain on the North American continent. Self-trained survivalists, the outlaws eluded the most sophisticated law enforcement technology on the planet and a pursuit force that represented more than seventy-five local, state, and federal police agencies with dozens of swat teams, U.S. Army Special Forces, and more than five hundred officers from across the country. Dead Run is the first in-depth account of this sensational case, replete with overbearing local sheriffs, Native American trackers, posses on horseback, suspicion of vigilante justice and police cover-ups, and the blunders of the nation's most exalted crime-fighters pursuing outlaws into territory in which only they could survive.

In this account, Rodney Barker tells the full and terrifying story of a microorganism popping up along the Eastern seaboard—far closer to home than the Ebola virus and equally frightening. In the coastal waters of North Carolina—and now extending as far north as the Chesapeake Bay area—a mysterious and deadly aquatic organism named Pfiesteria piscicida threatens to unleash an environmental nightmare and human tragedy of catastrophic proportions. At the very center of this narrative is the heroic effort of Dr. JoAnn Burkholder and her colleagues, embattled and dedicated scientists confronting medical, political, and corporate powers to understand and conquer this new scourge before it claims more victims.

In 1856 William Dove, a young tenant farmer, was tried and executed for the poisoning of his wife Harriet. The trial might have been a straightforward case of homicide, but because Dove became involved with Henry Harrison, a Leeds wizard, and demonstrated through his actions and words a strong belief in magic and the powers of the devil, considerable effort was made to establish whether these beliefs were symptomatic of insanity. It seems that Dove murdered his wife to hasten a prediction made by Harrison that he would remarry a more attractive and wealthy woman. Dove employed Harrison to perform various acts of magic, and also made his own written pact with the devil to improve his personal circumstances. The book will study Dove’s beliefs and Harrison’s activities within the rural and urban communities in which they lived, and examine how modern cultures attempted to explain this largely hidden mental world, which was so sensationally exposed. The Victorian period is often portrayed as an age of great social and educational progress. This book shows how beliefs dismissed by some Victorians as ‘medieval superstitions’ continued to influence the thoughts and actions of many people, viz most famously Conan `table tapper' Doyle.

Originally published: London: Rider, 2003.

Evil Among Them "Skinwalker" is the Navajo term for a demon in human form. But no mythical beast was as frightening as the true-life fiend who for four years spread fear throughout the deserts of the Shiprock, New Mexico area. The nightmare began on Thanksgiving 1996, when a feast of horror was served up to Joseph Fleming, 24, and Matthew Trecker, 18. Both young men were stabbed and slashed to death in an alleged attempt to cover up a robbery. Body Count The reign of terror continued as a woman was subjected to a grotesque sexual assault--but somehow managed to escape with her life. Donald Tsosie, 40, wasn't so lucky. After leaving a local watering hole, he was savagely bludgeoned, stabbed, and left to die. On June 9, 2000, Betty Lee, 36, was stabbed and then slain with a sledgehammer after being stripped of her clothing. Desert Dragnet Justice finally arrived in the form of county detectives Bob Melton and Tyler Truby, whose investigation zeroed in on hulking, hate-ridden Robert "Bobby" Fry, a misfit with a taste for brutality. Aided by Navajo trackers, Melton and Truby conducted a sleepless two-and-a-half day manhunt to bag the killer before the trail went cold. Then, like the Hero Twins of local legend, they brought a monster's murderous rampage to an end. . . Includes 16 Pages Of Shocking Photos!

Has the current political system in the People's Republic of China lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the Chinese public? On the basis of three carefully drawn surveys of Beijing residents between 1995 and 1999, the author finds that diffuse support for the current political system—based on attitudes toward institutions and values—remains strong, at least among city-dwellers, though it is gradually declining. Specific support for current political authorities, as measured by evaluations of their performance in major policy domains, is much weaker, with many citizens evaluating the authorities' performance as mediocre. In analyzing the longitudinal data presented here, the author finds that the same set of key sociodemographic attributes and sociopolitical orientations variably influence citizens' attitudes toward the political system and their evaluations of leaders' performance. Further, the study shows that citizens' attitudes toward the system, on the one hand, and their evaluation of incumbents' performance on the other, have different impacts on forms of political participation, such as voting and contacting authorities.