New York Times bestselling author Jennifer A. Nielsen transports readers to a corner of history with this inspiring story of a girl who discovers the strength of her people united in resisting oppression. Danger is never far from Audra's family farm in Lithuania. She always avoids the occupying Russian Cossack soldiers, who insist that everyone must become Russian -- they have banned Lithuanian books, religion, culture, and even the language. But Audra knows her parents are involved in something secret and perilous.In June 1893, when Cossacks arrive abruptly at their door, Audra's parents insist that she flee, taking with her an important package and instructions for where to deliver it. But escape means abandoning her parents to a terrible fate.As Audra embarks on a journey to deliver the mysterious package, she faces unimaginable risks, and soon she becomes caught up in a growing resistance movement. Can joining the underground network of book smugglers give Audra a chance to rescue her parents?

In June 1893, when Cossacks arrive abruptly at their door, Audra's parents insist that she flee, taking with her an important package and instructions for where to deliver it. But escape means abandoning her parents to a terrible fate. As Audra embar

Danger is never far from Audra's family farm in Lithuania. She always avoids the occupying Russian soldiers, who insist that everyone must become Russian. They have banned books, religion, culture, and even the language. But Audra knows her parents are involved in something secret and perilous.

In the second half of the twentieth century, a profound shift took place in how we think about preaching. We moved away from a vertical focus on the preacher who hands down the authoritative teaching, to more relational, narrative, and conversational models. Yet common to both of these understandings, says Paul Scott Wilson, is the idea that preaching is primarily about teaching, that it mainly conveys information about God.Important as this emphasis on preaching as teaching has been, Wilson believes that the time for a new approach has arrived. That new approach, which he names preaching as proclamation, has begun to arise from a variety of Euro-American and African American sources. Its primary aim is not to convey information, but to engender an encounter with God’s grace in Christ. More than guiding people to say Yes, now I understand, it hopes to lead them to proclaim I am redeemed; we are saved. More than telling the gospel story, it renders the gospel’s claim on human lives, leading to conviction of sin, repentance, and transformation. Pulling together the disparate strands of this new homiletical school, Wilson constructs a comprehensive introduction to preaching, focusing on its character as proclamation of the sovereign grace of God.

The consequences of incendiary rhetoric are predictable. This is what author Helio Fred Garcia argues and warns us about in Words on Fire. The El Paso terrorist attack finally brought to the forefront broader public recognition that leaders who dehumanize and demonize groups, rivals, or critics create conditions where citizens begin to accept, condone, and even commit acts of violence. Leaders of all kinds use language to move people, and this book is about how they do it. The Work focuses on Donald Trump’s use of language that dehumanizes others, and how his use of dehumanizing language can provoke “lone wolves” to commit acts of violence, a type of violent extremism known as stochastic terrorism. Garcia’s goal is to sound the alarm about this insidious spur to violence by spelling out the mechanisms by which it works so that leaders, citizens, journalists, and others can recognize it when it occurs and hold leaders accountable. The Work is a timely analysis of leadership communication applied to the current political and social climate that will find a long-term audience with engaged citizens, civic leaders, and in the business, military, academic, and religious communities with which the author has deep ties. Garcia provides responsible leaders not just with techniques to recognize when they are using language in ways that may lead to negative consequences, but with ways to stop, redirect their focus, and stay on the high ground. And he provides citizens, civic leaders, journalists, and others with a framework to recognize potentially violence-provoking rhetoric so they can hold leaders accountable for it with twelve warning signs that rhetoric may provoke violence.

Why is political rhetoric broken – and how can it be fixed? Words on Fire returns to the origins of rhetoric to recover the central place of eloquence in political thought. Eloquence, for the orators of classical antiquity, emerged from rhetorical relationships that exposed both speaker and audience to risk. Through close readings of Cicero – and his predecessors, rivals, and successors – political theorist and former speechwriter Rob Goodman tracks the development of this ideal, in which speech is both spontaneous and stylized, and in which the pursuit of eloquence mitigates political inequalities. He goes on to trace the fierce disputes over Ciceronian speech in the modern world through the work of such figures as Burke, Macaulay, Tocqueville, and Schmitt, explaining how rhetorical risk-sharing has broken down. Words on Fire offers a powerful critique of today's political language – and shows how the struggle over the meaning of eloquence has shaped our world.

A comprehensive introduction to preaching, emphasizing the encounter with God's grace as the goal and heart of the sermon.

A former reporter for Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal, Collings (journalism, U. of Michigan) describes how independent journalists have suffered attack for their work and how they are developing more effective ways to fight the repression. c. Book News Inc.

The timeless and essential anthology of Black Feminist thought—showing that Black women have always understood the need for feminism to be intersectional “In this pathbreaking collection of articles, Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall has taken us from the early 1830s to contemporary times. . . . She has refused to cut off contemporary African American women from the long line of sisters who have righteously struggled for the liberation of African American women from the dual oppressions of racism and sexism.” —from the epilogue by Johnnetta B. Cole The first major anthology to trace the development of Black Feminist thought in the United States, Words of Fire is Beverly Guy-Sheftall’s comprehensive collection of writings by more than sixty Black women. From the pioneering work of abolitionist Maria Miller Stewart and anti-lynching crusader Ida Wells-Barnett to the writings of feminist critics Michele Wallace and bell hooks, Black women have been writing about the multiple jeopardies—racism, sexism, and classism—that have made it imperative to forge a brand of feminism uniquely their own. In the words of Audre Lorde, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”—Words of Fire provides the tools to dismantle the interlocking systems that oppress us and to rebuild from their ashes a society of true freedom. Contributors include: Shirley Chisholm The Combahee River Collective Anna Julia Cooper Angela Davis Alice Dunbar-Nelson Lorraine Hansberry bell hooks Claudia Jones June Jordan Audre Lorde Beth E. Richie Barbara Smith Sojourner Truth Alice Walker Michele Wallace Ida Wells-Barnett