Mark Langan

13 seconds of pure terror in a shootout with a drug dealer... Real crime. Real-life cop stories. Sergeant Mark Langan relives his front-row seat working the seamier side of crime during his decorated twenty-six-year career from youngest rookie in 1978 to narcotics sergeant on the Omaha Police force. Langan caught bold burglars who silently entered homes to get thrills off of touching sleeping victims. He hit bookie joints in smoke-filled bars, squeezed snitches for information, and arrested prostitutes and their everyday "Johns" in dangerous downtown alleys. Langan worked his way up the ranks to command undercover narcotics operations in the 1980s when sinister LA gangbangers invaded Omaha and claimed neighborhoods to sell crack. In his celebrated career, Langan felt the gut-wrenching pain of innocent children caught inside the wicked world of drugs and crime, their "safe" worlds shattered when the battering ram knocked down their doors-their cries haunt him every day. And two players from his past reemerge in startling ways. Busting Bad Guys delivers a graphic and authentic look at solid policing on the streets of America's heartland and takes readers inside the high-adrenaline, top-secret investigations to develop innovative tactics to outsmart the criminals. Steven Eskew, book reviewer and writer in New York City, says "Langan relates his many adventures with meat and potatoes precision, illustrating a cop's life with detailed imagery but without sensationalizing the excitement. He balances his memoir by sharing his years-later encounter with "One-Eyed Jack's" daughter, (the drug dealer that was killed during a shoot out at the beginning of the book), and an update on a childhood playmate who had descended into prostitution. The book's sheer readability and intriguing subject matter makes you sorry to find yourself on the final page."

My True Crime Stories of Bookies, Drug Dealers and Ladies of the Night

Busting Bad Guys

This book examines the implications of Brexit for Africa-UK relations amid a ‘new scramble’ for the continent. Engaging Nkrumah on neo-colonialism and recent scholarship on global coloniality, Langan here underscores concerns that Brexit was fuelled by an imperial romanticism that now gives rise to a Global Britain project involving the perpetration of ‘Empire 2.0’ in Africa. In this context, he examines UK elites’ pursuit of Brexit trade deals and the ‘development’ consequences of premature market opening. Throughout its chapters, this work assesses strategic usages of UK aid monies in terms of economic leverage and the externalisation of migration and highlights the impact of UK development finance and corporate activities for the health and wellbeing of workers and host communities. Significantly, Langan explores the UK’s pursuit of security interests and human rights criticisms and concludes by highlighting African agency to resist the Global Britain project amid the fragility of the British state itself.

Brexit, 'Development' and Coloniality

Global Britain and Neo-colonialism in Africa

JUST WHEN I THOUGHT I'D SEEN IT ALL... In his award-winning book Busting Bad Guys, narcotics sergeant Mark Langan told gripping street stories about bookies, drug dealers, and ladies of the night. Now Langan tells more true-crime stories and those of his fellow Omaha police officers in blue- Sharp-shooting snipers who made a split-second life-and-death decision in Omaha's most infamous hostage standoff The bust that took down the Hells Angels and their mega-caches of methamphetamine, money, and weapons A bizarre stakeout to investigate satanic animal sacrifices in a haunted park Cold-blooded serial killers and the case for (and against) the death penalty Firsthand accounts from meth tweakers who chase the devil's pipe (and the missing suitcase filled with kilos of cocaine) The inside story about brutal blood sports: cockfighting and dogfighting And a kindergarten class's best show-and-tell

True Crime Stories of Cocaine, Cockfights, and Cold-Blooded Killers

More Busting Bad Guys

Africa’s association with the European Union has long been hailed as a progressive model of North-South relations. European officials, in particular, have represented the Africa-EU ‘partnership’ as a pro-poor enterprise in which trade interests are married to development prerogatives. Applying a moral economy perspective, this book examines the tangible impact of Africa-Europe trade and development co-operation on citizens in developing countries. In so doing, it challenges liberal accounts of Europe’s normative power to enable benevolent change in the Global South and illuminates how EU discourse acts to legitimise unequal trade ties that have regressive consequences for ‘the poor’. Drawing upon the author’s own fieldwork, it assesses the difference between norms and the actual impact of EU concessions in relation to: budget support; aid for trade; private sector development (PSD); decent work. It concludes by considering the value of a moral economy approach in the assessment of free trade structures more widely. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of Africanist IPE, European studies, and more broadly international political economy, international development, and international relations.

The Moral Economy of EU Association with Africa

Vários Autores

Dorron Otter

Stephen Hood

Mark Garnett

Aristotle Kallis

Robin Redhead

Political Ideologies provides a broad-ranging introduction to both the classical and contemporary political ideologies. Adopting a global outlook, it introduces readers to ideologies' increasingly global reach and the different national versions of these ideologies. Importantly, ideologies arepresented as frameworks of interpretation and political commitment, encouraging readers to evaluate how ideologies work in practice, the problematic links between ideas and political action, and the impact of ideologies. Regular learning features encourage readers to think critically about ideologies, and view them as competing and contestable ways of interpreting the world. A unique "stop and think" feature calls for readers to reflect on their own ideological beliefs.Online Resources:Political Ideologies is accompanied by comprehensive online resources, to support political ideology courses.For students: * Further reading and resources for each chapter to help students to undertake further research and deepen their understanding and critical thinking;* Regular updates help students to keep up to date with ideologies as frameworks of understanding and political action in the real world.For lecturers:* Indicative answers to questions in the book provide a framework for approaching these;* Powerpoint slides to support each chapter, providing an overview and key points to help with planning;* Further discussion and debate ideas, for use in seminars, encourage big picture thinking about the relationships between ideologies.

Political Ideologies

Langan reclaims neo-colonialism as an analytical force for making sense of the failure of ‘development’ strategies in many African states in an era of free market globalisation. Eschewing polemics and critically engaging the work of Ghana’s first President – Kwame Nkrumah – the book offers a rigorous assessment of the concept of neo-colonialism. It then demonstrates how neo-colonialism remains an impediment to genuine empirical sovereignty and poverty reduction in Africa today. It does this through examination of corporate interventions; Western aid-giving; the emergence of ‘new’ donors such as China; EU-Africa trade regimes; the securitisation of development; and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Throughout the chapters, it becomes clear that the current challenges of African development cannot be solely pinned on so-called neo-patrimonial elites. Instead it becomes imperative to fully acknowledge, and interrogate, corporate and donor interventions which lock many poorer countries into neo-colonial patterns of trade and production. The book provides an original contribution to studies of African political economy, demonstrating the on-going relevance of the concept of neo-colonialism, and reclaiming it for scholarly analysis in a global era.

Mark Langan

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