Benjamin Stafford is a wise cracking former U.S. Army Ranger, who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was raised in Dothan, Alabama, where his parents still live. Stafford has followed in his stepfathers footsteps, and gotten a job with the Department of Homeland Security. As an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agent, he works in Washington D.C., where he meets a fellow ICE agent named Frank Hernandez, who wants to be safe, and Beth St. James, who wants to reintroduce him to the God he pushed away years ago. While searching for the reasons behind a big decline in cocaine seizures...

Renewed interest in Swiss history has sought to overcome the old stereotypes of peasant liberty and republican exceptionalism. The heroic age of the Confederation in the fifteenth century is now seen as a turning-point as the Swiss polity achieved a measure of institutional consolidation and stability, and began to mark out clear frontiers. The Swiss and their Neighbours, 1460-1560 questions both assumptions. It argues that the administration of the common lordships by the cantons collectively gave rise to as much discord as co-operation, and remained a pragmatic device not a...