Mark Ungar Books

The book explores the alarming crime rates in Latin America, highlighting the region's highest homicide rate globally. It examines the tension faced by governments caught between the necessity for extensive reforms and the public's urgent demand for swift action, often resulting in harsh police measures reminiscent of the oppressive regimes prior to the 1980s. The analysis delves into the complexities of addressing crime while balancing civil liberties and effective governance.

This book is the most updated and comprehensive look at efforts to protect the Amazon, home to half of the world’s remaining tropical forests. In the past five years, the Basin’s countries have become the cutting edge of environmental enforcement through formation of constitutional protections, military operations, stringent laws, police forces, judicial procedures and societal efforts that together break through barriers that have long restrained decisive action. Even such advances, though, struggle to curb devastation by oil extraction, mining, logging, dams, pollution, and other forms of ecocide. In every country, environmental protection is crippled by politics, bureaucracy, unclear laws, untrained officials, small budgets, regional rivalries, inter-ministerial competition, collusion with criminals, and the global demand for oils and minerals. Countries are better at creating environmental agencies, that is, than making sure that they work. This book explains why, with country studies written by those on the front lines—from national enforcement directors to biologists and activists.