There is no more powerful symbol in American political life than the presidency, and the image of presidential power has had no less profound an impact on American fiction. A Pinnacle of Feeling is the first book to examine twentieth-century literature's deep fascination with the modern presidency and with the ideas about the relationship between state power and democracy that underwrote the rise of presidential authority. Sean McCann challenges prevailing critical interpretations through revelatory new readings of major writers, including Richard Wright, Gertrude Stein, Henry Roth, Zora Neale Hurston, Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Norman Mailer, Don Delillo, and Philip Roth. He argues that these writers not only represented or satirized presidents, but echoed political thinkers who cast the chief executive as the agent of the sovereign will of the American people. They viewed the president as ideally a national redeemer, and they took that ideal as a model and rival for their own work. A Pinnacle of Feeling illuminates the fundamental concern with democratic sovereignty that informs the most innovative literary works of the twentieth century, and shows how these works helped redefine and elevate the role of executive power in American culture.

Pinnacle City is many things to many people. To some it is a glittering metropolis, a symbol of prosperity watched over by the all-star superhero team, the Pinnacle City Guardians. Beyond the glitz and glamour, there is another city, one still feeling the physical and economic damage of the superhero-villain battles of generations past. The lower class, immigrants, criminals, aliens, sorcerers, and non-humans alike call this city home, looking to make a living, which is becoming increasingly difficult as the two sides of the city seem prepared to boil over into a violent conflict. Private investigator Eddie Enriquez, born with the ability to read the histories of objects by touch, still bears the scars of his time as a youthful minion for a low-level supervillain, followed by stints in prison and the military. Though now trying to live a straight-and-narrow life, he supports a drinking problem and painkiller addiction by using his powers to track down insurance cheats. When a mysterious woman enters his office asking him to investigate the death of prominent non-human rights activist Quentin Julian, a crime the police and heroes are ignoring, he takes the case in the hopes of doing something good. Superhero Kimberly Kline has just hit it big, graduating from her team of young heroes to the Pinnacle City Guardians with the new codename of Solar Flare. With good looks, powers that include flight, energy manipulation, superhuman strength, durability, and speed, as well as a good family name, the sky is the limit for her. Upbeat, optimistic, and perhaps a little naïve from the upper-crust life she was raised in, she hopes to make her family, and the world, proud by being the greatest superhero she can be . . . but things aren't always as they seem.

DIVSees hard-boiled crime fiction in relation to a changing literary marketplace and as an arena for conflicts about citizenship, class culture, and democracy during the New Deal./div

The Pinnacle of Power, first book in the Keeper of the Balance Trilogy, combines all of the classic elements of epic fantasy and sci-fi with a little touch of political intrigue mystery, suspense, espionage and romance.

"No one wants to be sent to Academie Metamorphose, the magical academy for delinquents. No one but me. I've purposely gotten kicked out of three prestigious academies. It's taken two and a half years. Finally, I'm about to get put into their reform program. And I'm thrilled. Not about the shit classes at this boarding school. Definitely not about the intense physical regimen. I'm excited because this academy is the perfect recruiting grounds for what I need: a force, a detonator, and a tock with loose morals and an affinity for breaking the rules. I need a powerful, heartless crew, because I'm about to pull off the magical heist of the century." -- Provided by publisher.

Authenticity is key for successful leaders—they remain true to themselves, drawing strength from their diverse constellation of experiences, perspectives, and heritages. Leadership invites you to challenge traditional norms about leader identity and develop your own positive leadership behaviors. This book’s transformational approach empowers you to critically examine your beliefs, values, and experiences, fostering a reflective self-knowledge base, an appreciation for multiple perspectives, and a sense of personal agency. It offers a clear, concise overview of leadership, emphasizing that there isn’t a single best way to lead; true leadership emerges from within. Your learning is supported by over 30 in-text activities and self-assessment quizzes designed to reframe your past experiences as leadership interventions and draw out valuable self-knowledge. This book is ideal for both undergraduate and postgraduate Leadership students. Andrei A. Lux is a Lecturer in Leadership at the School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University.

This debut novel by the two time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys wowed critics and readers everywhere and marked the debut of an important American writer. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read. It is a time of calamity in a major metropolitan city's Department of Elevator Inspectors, and Lila Mae Watson, the first black female elevator inspector in the history of the department, is at the center of it. There are two warring factions within the department: the Empiricists, who work by the book and dutifully check for striations on the winch cable and such; and the Intuitionists, who are simply able to enter the elevator cab in question, meditate, and intuit any defects. Lila Mae is an Intuitionist and, it just so happens, has the highest accuracy rate in the entire department. But when an elevator in a new city building goes into total freefall on Lila Mae's watch, chaos ensues. It's an election year in the Elevator Guild, and the good-old-boy Empiricists would love nothing more than to assign the blame to an Intuitionist. But Lila Mae is never wrong. The sudden appearance of excerpts from the lost notebooks of Intuitionism's founder, James Fulton, has also caused quite a stir. The notebooks describe Fulton's work on the "black box," a perfect elevator that could reinvent the city as radically as the first passenger elevator did when patented by Elisha Otis in the nineteenth century. When Lila Mae goes underground to investigate the crash, she becomes involved in the search for the portions of the notebooks that are still missing and uncovers a secret that will change her life forever. Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto, coming soon!