James Q. Wilson
Personal Information
Description
James Q. Wilson was born in Denver, Colorado. In 1952, he received a B.A. degree from the University of Redlands. In 1957 he received a M.A. degree in political science from the University of Chicago, followed by a Ph.D. degree in 1959. In 1961, he became the Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard University. During this time, he contributed to several government policy bodies, including the White House Task Force on Crime in 1966, the National Advisory Commission on Drug Abuse Prevention in 1972, the Attorney General's Task Force on Violent Crime in 1981, and the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 1985 to 1990. In 1987, he relocated and became the James Collins Professor of Management and Public Policy at the UCLA Anderson School of Management at UCLA. In 1998, he became the Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy. He is currently a professor and senior fellow at the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy at Boston College.
Books
The investigators
A brutal crime...A group of urban terrorists...An investigation of dirty cops... The leads in these supposedly unconnected cases have become tangled in some very ugly--and dangerous--knots. Now Special Operations detective Matt Payne and his colleagues find themselves fearing not only for their jobs, but also for their very lives...
American government
Crime
An electrifying thriller about innocence and absolute evil.Now bereft of both youth and ambition, Detective Inspector Ray Lennox is recovering from a mental breakdown induced by occupational stress and cocaine abuse, and a particularly horrifying child sex murder case back in Edinburgh. On vacation in Florida, his fiancee Trudi is only interested in planning their forthcoming wedding, and a bitter argument sees a deranged Lennox cast adrift in strip-mall Florida. He meets two women in a seedy bar, ending up at their apartment for a coke binge interrupted by two menacing strangers. After the ensuing brawl, Lennox finds himself alone with Tianna, the terrified ten-year-old daughter of one of the women, and a sheet of instructions that make him responsible for her immediate safety.Lennox takes her across the state to an exclusive marina on the Gulf of Mexico, and quickly suspects that he has stumbled into a hornet's nest: a gang of organized paedophiles, every bit as threatening as the monster that haunted him back in Edinburgh. His priority is to protect the abused girl, but can the edgy Lennox trust his own instincts? And can he negotiate her inappropriate sexuality, as well as his own mental fragility, while still trying to get to grips with the Edinburgh murder and the emotions it unleashes in him? A novel about the corruption and abuse of the human soul and the possibilities of redemption, Crime is a thrilling journey into the bright glamour of the Sunshine State and a seething underworld of utter darkness.
The Marriage Problem
Marriage, the emotional core and social foundation of our culture, is under attack. Profound changes in our values have eroded family life to a degree that degrades the very integrity of our society. This devastation takes many forms, says the renowned scholar, James Q. Wilson: the proliferation of cohabitation instead of formal marriage, the steep increase in single and teenage parents, and the rising divorce rate. Behind these diverse forces, Wilson draws on meticulous research to identify two underlying causes of this destruction: the rise of individualism and the consequences of slavery. Unafraid to contradict conventional wisdom, Wilson provides ample evidence that marriage benefits all parties, husbands, wives and, especially, children. An important and persuasive book, The Marriage Problem is a clarion call to rebuild the family, and society, by having a solid marital structure at its core.