Hard To Have Heroes

When fourteen-year-old wannabe cowboy Noah Odell and his widowed mother leave rainy Gold Hill, Oregon, to join Noah’s flamboyant uncle Bud on a ranch in New Mexico, they find themselves in the middle of nowhere with daily temperatures in excess of 100 degrees; enough rattlesnakes, buzzards, and hungry coyotes to start a zoo; a dozen scrawny steers; and a smelly outdoor toilet overrun with black widow spiders. When Bud presents Noah with a cantankerous mule named Brimstone, the adventures begin. Accompanied by his new best friends—an unlikely cowboy philosopher named Marvin Couch and a precocious tomboy prodigy named LaDonna Hawthorne—Noah and his mule encounter some of the Chihuahuan Desert’s strangest characters. Green space monsters, eccentric Apache college professors, jackalopes, royal Spanish ghosts, and an inept gang of local bullies assure that the days are never dull, especially when the U.S. Army lawyers and MPs try to confiscate Bud’s ranch to expand a top-secret rocket-testing facility at nearby White Sands Proving Ground.

A Hero Like You looks at everyday heroes and highlights qualities such as loyalty, compassion, resourcefulness, justice, and courage. The lyrical rhyme and relatable illustrations remind us that we all have the opportunity to be a hero by helping others, doing right and making the world a better place. "What the world needs is a hero like you!"

Teenage Ellie has always had romantic ideas about drug addicts. The tragic, artistic souls drawn to needles and pills have been an obsession since the death of her junkie mother ten years ago. But when Ellie lands in an upscale rehab clinic where nothing is what it appears to be, she'll find another, more dangerous romance and find out how easily drugs and murder go hand-in-hand. MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN JUNKIES is a seductive coming-of-age story, a pop and drug culture-fueled tale of a young girl seeking darkness and what she finds there. This gorgeous, must-have hardback is the first original graphic novel from ED BRUBAKERand SEAN PHILLIPS, the bestselling creators of CRIMINAL,KILL OR BE KILLED, THE FADE OUT, FATALE, and INCOGNITO.

This second edition of Professions in Ethical Focus comprises over seventy-five readings complemented by twenty case studies with corresponding discussion questions. These resources are organized into several thematic units, including “conflicts of interest,” “honesty, deception, and trust,” “privacy and confidentiality,” and “professionalism, diversity, and pluralism.” An alternative table of contents is also provided, identifying readings that bear on particular professions such as engineering, journalism, medicine, law, and policing. The book’s introductory unit offers short selections from classic and contemporary ethical theory, including non-Western traditions. All of the readings have been introduced by the editors and carefully excerpted for relevance, always with the needs of student readers in mind.

Abraham Lincoln, Princess Diana, Rick in Casablanca--why do we perceive certain people as heroes? What qualities do we see in them? What must they do to win our admiration? In Heroes, Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals offer a stimulating tour of the psychology of heroism, shedding light on what heroism and villainy mean to most people and why heroes--both real people and fictional characters--are so vital to our lives. The book discusses a broad range of heroes, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino, Senator Ted Kennedy, and explorer Ernest Shackleton, plus villains such as Shakespeare's Iago. The authors highlight the Great Eight traits of heroes (smart, strong, selfless, caring, charismatic, resilient, reliable, and inspiring) and outline the mental models that we have of how people become heroes, from the underdog who defies great odds (David vs. Goliath) to the heroes who redeem themselves or who overcome adversity. Brimming with psychological insight, Heroes provides an illuminating look at heroes--and into our own minds as well.

Describes recent acts of bravery and heroism performed by Coast Guard personnel.

Difficult Empathy takes up the question of empathy as fundamentally a rhetorical concern, focusing on the ways we encounter and understand one another in what we read and write, hear and say. The book centres around the argument that empathy as a rhetorical event occurs not simply in the minds of individuals but as a product of the rhetorical situations, practices, cultures, and values in which we engage. Rather than identifying empathy as a cure-all, or jettisoning the concept altogether, the author acknowledges empathy’s potential as well as its limitations by focusing on what makes empathy a hard and ultimately worthwhile practice. This nuanced and original study will interest scholars working at the intersection of rhetoric and composition with empathy, as well as those studying empathy in fields such as critical and cultural theory, politics, media analysis, social psychology, and the cognitive humanities.