Michael P. Johnson – författare

This collection offers students the essential Lincoln in a brief and accessible format. From famous documents like the Lincoln-Douglas debates and the second inaugural address to crucial memoranda and letters, it reveals the development of Lincoln's views on all the critical issues of the day.

In 1860, when four million African Americans were enslaved, a quarter-million others, including William Ellison, were "free people of color." But Ellison was remarkable. Born a slave, his experience spans the history of the South from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. In a day when most Americans, black and white, worked the soil, barely scraping together a living, Ellison was a cotton-gin maker—a master craftsman. When nearly all free blacks were destitute, Ellison was wealthy and well-established. He owned a large plantation and more slaves than all but the richest white planters.While Ellison was exceptional in many respects, the story of his life sheds light on the collective experience of African Americans in the antebellum South to whom he remained bound by race. His family history emphasizes the fine line separating freedom from slavery.

Traditionally, the secession of the states in the lower South has been viewed as an irrational response to Lincoln's election or as a rational response to the genuine threat a Republican president posed to the geographical expansion of slavery. Both views emphasize the fundamental importance of relations between the federal government and the southern states, but overlook the degree to which secession was a response to a crisis within the South. Johnson argues that secession was a double revolution -- for home rule and for those who ruled at home -- brought about by an internal crisis in southern society. He portrays secession as the culmination of the long-developing tension between slavery on one side and the institutional and ideological consequences of the American Revolution on the other. This tension was masked during the antebellum years by the conflicting social, political, sectional, and national loyalties of many southerners. Lincoln's election forced southerners to choose among their loyalties, and their choice revealed a South that was divided along lines coinciding roughly with an interest in slavery and the established order.Starting with a thorough analysis of election data and integrating quantitative with more traditional literary sources, Johnson goes beyond the act of secession itself to examine what the secessionists said and did after they left the Union. Although this book is a close study of secession in Georgia, it has implications for the rest of the lower South. The result is a new thesis that presents secession as the response to a more complex set of motivations than has been recognized.

A multidisciplinary approach to problem-solving in community-based organizations using decision models and operations research applicationsA comprehensive treatment of public-sector operations research and management science, Decision Science for Housing and Community Development: Localized and Evidence-Based Responses to Distressed Housing and Blighted Communities addresses critical problems in urban housing and community development through a diverse set of decision models and applications. The book represents a bridge between theory and practice and is a source of collaboration between decision and data scientists and planners, advocates, and community practitioners.The book is motivated by the needs of community-based organizations to respond to neighborhood economic and social distress, represented by foreclosed, abandoned, and blighted housing, through community organizing, service provision, and local development. The book emphasizes analytic approaches that increase the ability of local practitioners to act quickly, thoughtfully, and effectively. By doing so, practitioners can design and implement responses that reflect stakeholder values associated with healthy and sustainable communities; that benefit from increased organizational capacity for evidence-based responses; and that result in solutions that represent improvements over the status quo according to multiple social outcome measures. Featuring quantitative and qualitative analytic methods as well as prescriptive and exploratory decision modeling, the book also includes: Discussions of the principles of decision theory and descriptive analysis to describe ways to identify and quantify values and objectives for community developmentMathematical programming applications for real-world problem solving in foreclosed housing acquisition and redevelopmentApplications of case studies and community-engaged research principles to analytics and decision modelingDecision Science for Housing and Community Development: Localized and Evidence-Based Responses to Distressed Housing and Blighted Communities is an ideal textbook for upper-undergraduate and graduate-level courses in decision models and applications; humanitarian logistics; nonprofit operations management; urban operations research; public economics; performance management; urban studies; public policy; urban and regional planning; and systems design and optimization. The book is also an excellent reference for academics, researchers, and practitioners in operations research, management science, operations management, systems engineering, policy analysis, city planning, and data analytics.

Demonstrates how residents can play a leading role in the positive transformation of their communities in the face of economic and population decline.Supporting Shrinkage describes a new approach to citizen-engaged, community-focused planning methods and technologies for cities and regions facing decline, disinvestment, shrinkage, and social and physical distress. The volume evaluates the benefits and costs of a wide range of analytic approaches for designing policy and planning interventions for shrinking cities and distressed communities. These include collaborative planning, social media, civic technology, game design, analytics, decision modeling and decision support, and spatial analysis. The authors present case studies of three US cities addressing shrinkage and decline, with a focus on issues of social justice, democratization of knowledge, and local empowerment. Proposed as a solution is an approach that puts community engagement and empowerment at the center, combined with data and technology innovations. The authors argue that decisions informed by qualitative and quantitative data and analytic methods, implemented through accessible and affordable technologies, and based on notions of social impact and social justice, can enable residents to play a leading role in the positive transformation of shrinking cities and distressed communities.

Demonstrates how residents can play a leading role in the positive transformation of their communities in the face of economic and population decline.Supporting Shrinkage describes a new approach to citizen-engaged, community-focused planning methods and technologies for cities and regions facing decline, disinvestment, shrinkage, and social and physical distress. The volume evaluates the benefits and costs of a wide range of analytic approaches for designing policy and planning interventions for shrinking cities and distressed communities. These include collaborative planning, social media, civic technology, game design, analytics, decision modeling and decision support, and spatial analysis. The authors present case studies of three US cities addressing shrinkage and decline, with a focus on issues of social justice, democratization of knowledge, and local empowerment. Proposed as a solution is an approach that puts community engagement and empowerment at the center, combined with data and technology innovations. The authors argue that decisions informed by qualitative and quantitative data and analytic methods, implemented through accessible and affordable technologies, and based on notions of social impact and social justice, can enable residents to play a leading role in the positive transformation of shrinking cities and distressed communities.

This edited volume is an introduction to diverse methods and applications in operations research focused on local populations and community-based organizations that have the potential to improve the lives of individuals and communities in tangible ways. The book's themes include: space, place and community; disadvantaged, underrepresented or underserved populations; international and transnational applications; multimethod, cross-disciplinary and comparative approaches and appropriate technology; and analytics. The book is comprised of eleven original submissions, a re-print of a 2007 article by Johnson and Smilowitz that introduces CBOR, and an introductory chapter that provides policy motivation, antecedents to CBOR in OR/MS, a theory of CBOR and a comprehensive review of the chapters. It is hoped that this book will provide a resource to academics and practitioners who seek to develop methods and applications that bridge the divide between traditional OR/MS rooted in mathematical models and newer streams in 'soft OR' that emphasize problem structuring methods, critical approaches to OR/MS and community engagement and capacity-building.

This edited volume is an introduction to diverse methods and applications in operations research focused on local populations and community-based organizations that have the potential to improve the lives of individuals and communities in tangible ways. The book's themes include: space, place and community; disadvantaged, underrepresented or underserved populations; international and transnational applications; multimethod, cross-disciplinary and comparative approaches and appropriate technology; and analytics. The book is comprised of eleven original submissions, a re-print of a 2007 article by Johnson and Smilowitz that introduces CBOR, and an introductory chapter that provides policy motivation, antecedents to CBOR in OR/MS, a theory of CBOR and a comprehensive review of the chapters. It is hoped that this book will provide a resource to academics and practitioners who seek to develop methods and applications that bridge the divide between traditional OR/MS rooted in mathematical models and newer streams in 'soft OR' that emphasize problem structuring methods, critical approaches to OR/MS and community engagement and capacity-building.