Stand Out Of Our Light

Argues that human freedom is threatened by systems of intelligent persuasion developed by tech giants who compete for our time and attention. This title is also available as Open Access.

Debauched, divorced and courting death, Billy Ray Schafer is a comedian who has forgotten how to laugh. Over the course of seven spun-out days across the American Southwest, he travels from from hell gig to hell gig in search of a reason to keep living in this bleak and violent glimpse into the psyche of a thoroughly ruined man. Ex-inmate, ex-husband, ex-father - comedian is the only title Schafer has left. Trapped in the wreckage of his wasted career, Billy Ray knows the answer to the question: what happens when the opportunity doesn't come - or worse - it comes and goes?

When you’re new to the workforce, ambition and talent aren’t enough—getting on the fast track to success requires much more. If you’re a recent college graduate or new hire, Effective Immediately shows you how to excel at your first job and jump-start your career. As an up-and-coming professional, you’ll learn how to transform yourself from entry-level employee into skilled, invaluable all-star during your first year on the job. Accomplished young professional Emily Bennington and her mentor, seasoned manager Skip Lineberg, empower you to: • Establish yourself as a top performer from day one • Use every task—even grunt work—as an opportunity to shine • Earn the respect of your boss, colleagues, and clients • Cope with conflict, mistakes, and toxic coworkers • Land key assignments and gain greater responsibility • Manage projects and lead teams like a pro Packed with practical advice, useful resources, and wisdom from former newbies, this savvy hand-book gives you the tools, knowledge, and confidence you need to reach your highest potential.

WINNER: Independent Press Awards 2021 - Business: Motivational DISTINGUISHED FAVORITE: NYC Big Book Award 2021 - Leadership Leadership presence doesn't come with a title or promotion - good leaders develop presence over time. Leadership presence is how you show up and contribute to meetings, and whether or not you can project confidence and poise under pressure - do you already have a presence? Leadership presence is that elusive "we know it when we see it" quality. You may have a leadership title or tremendous leadership potential, but that alone does not give you presence. Being perceived as a leader when interacting with customers, peers or executives is the essence of leadership presence. Your leadership presence is evaluated by others based on how you show up and contribute in meetings, how well you project confidence and keep poise under pressure and whether you can engage others in ways that are authentic, empathetic and motivational. Stand Out walks you through achieving this presence so you get that next promotion and give your career that extra boost. Stand Out explains that the goal of leadership presence is to align other people's impression of you with your best authentic self. Body language expert and executive coach Carol Kinsey Goman teaches the five essential skills needed: composure, connection, confidence, credibility and charisma. She also explains how leadership presence is different for women, how nonverbal communication builds or destroys presence and why self-promotion is essential. This book shows aspiring and experienced leaders alike how to more positively influence the impression they make on others.

Now a senior at Pine Mountain Academy, fifteen-year-old Ryan Dean West becomes captain of the rugby team, shares his dormitory room with a twelve-year-old prodigy, Sam Abernathy, and through the course of the year learns to appreciate things he has triedto resist, including change.

A history of America’s Stand Your Ground gun laws, from Reconstruction to Trayvon Martin After a young, white gunman killed twenty-six people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, conservative legislators lamented that the tragedy could have been avoided if the schoolteachers had been armed and the classrooms equipped with guns. Similar claims were repeated in the aftermath of other recent shootings—after nine were killed in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, and in the aftermath of the massacre in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Despite inevitable questions about gun control, there is a sharp increase in firearm sales in the wake of every mass shooting. Yet, this kind of DIY-security activism predates the contemporary gun rights movement—and even the stand-your-ground self-defense laws adopted in thirty-three states, or the thirteen million civilians currently licensed to carry concealed firearms. As scholar Caroline Light proves, support for “good guys with guns” relies on the entrenched belief that certain “bad guys with guns” threaten us all. Stand Your Ground explores the development of the American right to self-defense and reveals how the original “duty to retreat” from threat was transformed into a selective right to kill. In her rigorous genealogy, Light traces white America’s attachment to racialized, lethal self-defense by unearthing its complex legal and social histories—from the original “castle laws” of the 1600s, which gave white men the right to protect their homes, to the brutal lynching of “criminal” Black bodies during the Jim Crow era and the radicalization of the NRA as it transitioned from a sporting organization to one of our country’s most powerful lobbying forces. In this convincing treatise on the United States’ unprecedented ascension as the world’s foremost stand-your-ground nation, Light exposes a history hidden in plain sight, showing how violent self-defense has been legalized for the most privileged and used as a weapon against the most vulnerable.

A monumentally devastating plague leaves only a few survivors who, while experiencing dreams of a battle between good and evil, move toward an actual confrontation as they migrate to Boulder, Colorado.