After the 1960s, rapid urbanization in developing regions in Latin America, Africa, and Asia was marked by the expansion of low-income "irregular" settlements that developed informally and which, by the 2000s, often constituted between 20-60 percent of the built-up area of metropolitan areas and other large cities. There has been a variety of research directed at the housing policies involved with these informal settlements, yet apart from the activities of Latin American Housing Network (...

Today in Texas, over 1500 colonias in the counties along the Mexican border are home to some 400,000 people. Often lacking basic services, such as electricity, water and sewerage, fire protection, policing, schools, and health care, these "irregular" subdivisions offer the only low-cost housing available to the mostly Hispanic working poor.This book presents the results of a major study of colonias in three transborder metropolitan areas and uncovers the reasons why colonias are sp...

The turn of the century has been a moment of rapid urbanization. Much of this urban growth is taking place in the cities of the developing world and much of it in informal settlements. This book presents cutting-edge research from various world regions to demonstrate these trends. The contributions reveal that informal housing is no longer the domain of the urban poor; rather it is a significant zone of transactions for the middle-class and even transnational elites. Indeed, the book prese...

In recent years there has been a growth in both the practice and research of dark tourism; the phenomenon of visiting sites of tragedy or disaster. Expanding on this trend, this book examines dark tourism through the new lens of pilgrimage. It focuses on dark tourism sites as pilgrimage destinations, dark tourists as pilgrims, and pilgrimage as a form of dark tourism. Taking a broad definition of pilgrimage so as to consider aspects of both religious and non-religious travel that might be ...

This book presents the peer-reviewed proceedings of the 8th Healthcare Systems Ergonomics and Patient Safety (HEPS) international conference, held in Dublin, Ireland, on June 18-20, 2025, which was endorsed by the International Ergonomics Association (IEA). The conference theme of ‘Safer Better Care, By All, For All’ promoted the importance of bringing together Patient and Public Involvement, Healthcare Professionals and Human Factors/Ergonomics (HFE) expertise to address the problem of he...

A comprehensive series of essays exploring Peter C. Phan’s groundbreaking work to widen Christian theology beyond the Western worldPeter C. Phan’s wide-ranging contributions to theology and his pioneering work on religious pluralism, migration, and Christian identity have made a global impact on the field.The essays in Theology without Borders offer a variety of perspectives across Phan’s fundamental work in eschatology, world christianity, interre...

An engrossing and revelatory first look at the search for alien life-on Earth and beyondFor the past twenty years, Peter Ward has been at the forefront of popular science writing, with books such as the influential and controversial Rare Earth. In Life as We Do Not Know It, Ward, with his signature blend of eloquence, humor, and learned insight, vividly details the latest scientific findings, cutting-edge research, and intrepid new theories on the...

A riveting explanation of epigenetics, offering startling insights into our inheritable traits.In the 1700s, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck first described epigenetics to explain the inheritance of acquired characteristics; however, his theory was supplanted in the 1800s by Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection through heritable genetic mutations. But natural selection could not adequately explain how rapidly species re-diversified and repopula...

How often did our ancestors bathe? How often did they wash their clothes and change them? What did they understand cleanliness to be? Why have our hygienic habits changed so dramatically over time? In short, how have we come to be so clean?The Clean Body explores one of the most fundamental and pervasive cultural changes in Western history since the seventeenth century: the personal hygiene revolution. In the age of Louis XIV bathing was rare and hygiene was mainly a matte...

In the tradition of Jon Ronson and Tim Wu, an absorbing and revelatory journey into the American Way of Defying Death . . .As longevity medicine revolutionizes the lives of many older people, the quest to take the next step—to live as long as we choose—has spurred a scientific arms race in search of the elixir of life, funded by Big Tech and Silicon Valley.Once the stuff of Mesopotamian mythology and episodes of Star Trek, the effort to make humans immortal...

"A lucid, bright and essential work of reporting, analysis and genuine care. Peter Ward has given us a new way to think about private endeavors in space. Superb."⁠—Rivka Galchen, author of Little LaborsThis in-depth work of reportage dares to ask what’s at stake in privatizing outer spaceEarth is in trouble—so dramatically that we’re now scrambling to explore space for valuable resources and a home for permanent colonization. With ...

An absorbing and revelatory journey into the American Way of defying deathAs longevity medicine revolutionizes the lives of many older people, the quest to take the next step—to live as long as we choose—has spurred a scientific arms race in search of the elixir of life, funded by Big Tech and Silicon Valley.Once the stuff of Mesopotamian mythology and episodes of Star Trek, the effort to make humans immortal is becoming increasingly credible as th...