Organized crime in America today is not the tough hoodlums familiar to moviegoers and TV watchers. It is more sophisticated, with many college graduates, gifted with organizational genius, all belonging to twenty-four tightly knit "families," who have corrupted legitimate business and infiltrated some of the highest levels of local, state, and federal government. Their power reaches into Congress, into the executive and judicial branches, police agencies, and labor unions, and into such business enterprises as real estate, retail stores, restaurants, hotels, linen-supply houses, and garbage-collection routes.How does organized crime operate? How dangerous is it? What are the implications for American society? How may we cope with it? In answering these questions, Cressey asserts that because organized crime provides illicit goods and services demanded by legitimate society, it has become part of legitimate society. This fascinating account reveals the parallels: the growth of specialization, "big-business practices" (pooling of capital and reinvestment of profits; fringe benefits like bail money), and government practices (negotiated settlements and peace treaties, defined territories, fair-trade agreements).For too long we have, as a society, concerned ourselves only with superficial questions about organized crime. "Theft of the Nation" focuses on to a more profound and searching level. Of course, organized crime exists. Cressey not only establishes this fact, but proceeds to explore it rigorously and with penetration. One need not agree with everything Cressey writes to conclude that no one, after the publication of "Theft of the Nation", can be knowledgeable about organized crime without having read this book.

Theft of a Nation is a powerful criminological examination of Wall Street's recent financial meltdown. Through the lenses of white collar crime and victimology, the book presents a critical assessment of the economic and political elites who were responsible, shows how Americans were victimized, and assesses the resulting regulation.

Tom Gallagher's analysis of the largest country in the Balkans focuses upon its efforts to transform its image. At the same time many of the key legacies of the Ceausescu regime remain intact. The success of NATO expansion and European enlargement depend upon the outcomes of necessary reforms in Romania.

In what has been described as ''the crime wave no one talks about,'' billions of dollars worth of wages are stolen from millions of workers in the United States every year - a grand theft that exceeds every other larceny category on record annually. Between two and three million workers are paid less than the legal minimum wage. More than three million are misclassified by their employers as independent contractors when they are really employees, allowing employers to shirk their share of payroll taxes and illegally deny workers overtime pay. Even the Economic Policy Foundation, a business-funded think tank, estimated that companies annually steal $19 billion in unpaid overtime. Nationally recognized labor activist Kim Bobo's Wage Theft in America is an incisive handbook for activists, organizers, workers, and concerned citizens on how to prevent the flagrant exploitation of America's working people. Bobo offers a sweeping analysis of the crisis, citing hard-hitting statistics and heartbreaking first-person accounts of exploitation at the hands of employers. She then offers concrete solutions, with special attention to what a new presidential administration can do to address one of the gravest issues facing workers in the twenty-first century.

Since the 1989 fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, Romania, arguably the most regimented of states in the Soviet bloc, has struggled with the transition from totalitarian state to democratic nation. In this insightful examination of modern Romania, Tom Gallagher provides an overview of Romania’s unique political and social history, focusing on both its national identity as well as the legacy of Soviet rule. Gallagher provides an in-depth look at Romania since 1989, focusing on the government’s attempts at economic reform, engagement with democracy, problems with corruption among the ruling elite, as well as the weakness of civil society and the resilience of implacable expressions of nationalism. Ultimately, Gallagher argues that thus far democracy has essentially failed in Romania. In fact, he warns that Romania is on its way to becoming one of the most unequal states in Europe and quite possibly a future trouble-spot unless efforts to resume much-needed reforms are undertaken.