This is not your father’s neighbor war. Disputes today spiral out of control much faster than before, and we all seem to have a lot more to complain about than in the past. Noise isn’t just a barking dog or a loud stereo – it’s a vicious dog that barks overnight, and earth-shaking bass that rocks neighbors to their cores. Boundary disputes go way beyond fencing these days – they involve shared driveways, shining lights, wafting smoke, and surveillance cameras. Are neighborhood kids just as bad now as they always were? Let’s put it this way: Did they always videotape their antics from vandalism to “beat-downs” of other kids to post them on YouTube?

The world has changed – seemingly simple differences among people living in close proximity are now more common occurrences, and are more difficult to address. They typically snowball from simple matters into complicated messes, and are almost impossible to resolve as they persist for years, ruining home life for multiple parties and changing many people at their cores for the worse. Wars can last for years, costing thousands of dollars and increasingly ending with one neighbor off to jail while the other’s off to the hospital or morgue.

So many of us no longer live in community-centric neighborhoods, be they within the city, the suburbs or a rural area, so we are now less likely to know our neighbors by name. We don’t seek friendships in our own backyards, choosing instead the long-distance relationships established over time, sustained via email and low-cost telephone conversations. When we don’t know the people living adjacent to us, we tend to assign to them the traits we learn about the outside world from the local news and reality shows. So, before getting to know our neighbors, we’re quick to determine they’re vacuous, insensitive jerks. And they think the same of us.

While every generation can say the world’s gone to hell, referring to the generation in tow, there indeed have been social changes and movements away from neighborly behavior that make Neighbors From Hell a timely, helpful narrative guidebook. The evidence is everywhere – in the news, in police logs, in the ever-growing number of people registering with NeighborsFromHell.com and writing to the author for his help.

Author Bob Borzotta works with network news operations, national papers, high-profile web sites and independent producers – all of whom contact him for his advice on this emergent story – the topic of which affects most people at some point in their lives. He has dispensed his counsel on NPR call-in shows; he’s a trusted resource at ABC and CNN for neighbor dispute stories and resolution methods. He is quoted around the world, and his real-life character crossed the bridge to appear in a 2008 novel about neighbors at war.