Sometimes it's necessary to push beyond the usual limits of themediation process to achieve deeper and more lasting change.Mediating Dangerously shows how to reach beyond technical andtraditional intervention to the outer edges and dark places ofdispute resolution, where risk taking is essential and fundamentalchange is the desired result. It means opening wounds and lookingbeneath the surface, challenging comfortable assumptions, andexploring dangerous issues such as dishonesty, denial, apathy,domestic violence, grief, war, and slavery in order to reach adeeper level of transformational change. Mediating Dangerously shows conflict resolution professionals howto advance beyond the traditional steps, procedures, and techniquesof mediation to unveil its invisible heart and soul and to revealthe subtle and sensitive engine that drives the process of personaland organizational transformation. This book is a major newcontribution to the literature of conflict resolution that willinspire and educate professionals in the field for years to come.

The acclaimed actor makes his fiction debut with this enthralling urban fantasy in which a holy warrior must convince a doctor with no faith to help stop a powerful demon and his minions from succeeding in creating hell on earth—a thrilling adventure of science and faith, good and evil, damnation and salvation. Imagine that everyone you have ever known or loved was forced against their will into a state of demonic possession and spiritual slavery. Imagine an unholy cabal of the world’s richest and most powerful men directing this sinister plan in order to cement their unbridled control of the planet. Imagine two heroes emerging from that dark-ness to do battle with the forces of evil. Set in the mean streets of Chicago, Talon of God is the action-packed adventure centered around Lauryn Jefferson, a beautiful young doctor who is dragged into a seemingly impossible battle against the invisible forces of Satan’s army and their human agents that are bent on enslaving humanity in a mission to establish the kingdom of hell on Earth. But Lauryn is a skeptic, and it’s only as she sees a diabolical drug sweep her city and begins to train in the ways of a spirit warrior with Talon Hunter, the legendary man of God, that she discovers her true nature and inner strength. Facing dangerous trials and tests, it’s a true baptism by fire. And if she and Hunter fail, millions could die. And rivers of blood would flow throughout the land. Imagine such horror. Such pain. And imagine what it would take to fight against it. For only the strongest and most faithful will survive . . . Get ready. Armageddonapproaches quickly.

Milo Talon knew the territory and the good men from the bad. He had ridden the Outlaw Trail and could find out things others couldn’t. That was why a rich man named Jefferson Henry hired Milo to hunt down a missing girl. But from the moment Milo began his search, he knew something wasn’t right. Three people had already died, an innocent woman was on the run, and a once sleepy town was getting crowded with hired guns. Suddenly, Milo Talon realized that there were still things he had to learn—about the woman he was trying to find, the man who had hired him, and the murderer who wanted him dead. But most of all, Milo had a few things to learn about himself. And he would have to work fast, because one mistake could cost him his life.

Man is threatened only by fellow man. Great is that threat because man, throughout history, has fought fellow man. All impactful nations of our world fight other nations and must spend enormously because they must be ready to fight. It seems that we cannot outgrow fighting. This book imagines a world in which man does not engage in war. Animals are surrogates, and only animals engage in fighting to the death. Such practice is beneath civilized man, but he is not totally removed. Humans are obsessed with watching animals fight to the death. The animals do not mind. What happens when kids try it? Once the passion for fierce fighting enters the blood, can humans resist the urge to engage in war? Yes, they are superior to animals, but can humans refrain from doing the thing they believed they were too smart to ever do?

For commoners in the Qing dynasty, the most salient agents of the imperial state were not the emperor's appointed officials but rather the clerks and runners of the county yamen, the lowest level of functionaries in the Qing state's administrative hierarchy. Yet until now we have known very little about these critically important persons beyond the caricatured portrayals of corruption and venality left by Qing high officials and elites. Drawing from the rich archival records of Ba county, Sichuan, the author challenges the simplicity of these portrayals by taking us inside the county yamen to provide the first detailed look at local administrative practice from the perspective of those who actually carried it out. Who were the county clerks and runners? How were they recruited, organized, disciplined, and rewarded? What was the economic basis for a career in the yamen? How did clerks and runners view themselves as well as legitimize their role in Qing government? And what impact did their interests and practices have on symbolically laden elements of imperial government such as the magistrate's court? In addressing these questions, the author traverses the disjuncture between statutory regulations and the realities of daily administrative practice, uncovering a realm of informal, semiautonomous, yet highly structured and even rationalized procedures. Although frequently in violation of formal law, this extra-statutory system nevertheless remained an irreducible component of local government under the Qing. Recognizing the centrality of such informal practice to yamen administration forces us to rethink not only traditional assumptions concerning local corruption in the Qing, but also the ways in which we conceptualize the boundaries between state and society in late imperial China.

A battered young woman wakes from a coma in a space port hospital with no memories of her past. The only thing she remembers are two words: Lex Talionis--the Law of Revenge. To discover her identity, she must re-live the nightmares of her past, and face the only survivor of a terrible massacre that connects her with her abductors.