Stop copying someone else's religion. Start living out a faith that's all your own. A “firsthand” faith is never what somebody tells you it should be, even if that person is a parent, friend, or pastor. “Firsthand” means you went after it for yourself and now it’s all yours. That kind of faith is changes everything, but most people only find it by facing tough questions. Like: • If God is real, why does he feel far away? • Can I ever get past the dos and don’ts of church? • Why should I even try to follow God when I fail so often? • How do I experience a relationship with Christ that’s more than surface level? • Is it possible to have authentic faith when I have so many doubts? • How can I connect with others who take firsthand faith seriously? In these pages, Ryan and Josh Shook talk candidly about growing up in church only to realize that “how things are supposed to be” had stopped working for them. They set out to find what makes a young person’s faith stick—or not. Each chapter is designed to spark a discussion, and comes complete with personal inventories, Bible teaching, small-group discussion questions, and links to original video. Now includes bonus “Looking Back from Here” Q&A with the authors

It’s time for a nonfiction feast. Firsthand takes readers into the lives and minds of genteel doomsayers, autistic activists, currency rebels, and audacious climate engineers. Follow spelling reformers, misunderstood criminals, Egyptian revolutionaries, pro-GMO environmentalists, and, of course, the Illinois man whose left hand was sewn onto his right wrist. This collection of David Wolman’s writing contains fifteen stories from Wired, Nature, The Atavist, the author’s books and more. Go ahead: dig in.

Beginning with braille provides a wealth of effective activities for promoting literacy at the early stages of braille instruction. The text includes creative and practical strategies for designing and delivering quality braille instruction and teacher-friendly suggestions for many areas such as reading aloud to young children, selecting and making early tactile books, and teaching tactile and hand movement skills. This book also includes tips on designing worksheets, introducing braille contractions, teaching the use of the braillewriter, and facilitating the writing process in braille. Chapters also address guidelines for individualizing instruction, the literacy needs of students with additional disabilities, and assessment of student progress in developing literacy skills.

This six-week, video-driven Bible study is designed for all youth, grades 7 to 12.

High-quality higher education leadership is critical to student engagement, persistence, and graduation outcomes. With higher education institutions pushing for Black student enrollment and effective and innovative strategies to retain current students, leadership in institutions must reflect the Black academics they serve. In addition, there is a shortage of Black department heads, deans, and provosts to make important decisions about the matriculation of students toward graduation. Therefore, it is essential that higher education institutions take what they have learned from those who have been in academic leadership roles and develop new strategies to recruit, mentor, and retain high-quality Black academic leaders that reflect the student population. The Future of Black Leadership in Higher Education: Firsthand Experiences and Global Impact provides experiences, narratives, and best practices that are more inclusive of Black professionals by allowing them to seek advancement in these critical roles. This book presents crucial knowledge about academic leadership for Black professionals and familiarizes readers with policies, practices, and procedures that impact the experiences of Black leadership. Covering predominantly white institutions, second-career Black women, and Black professors, this premier reference source is a dynamic resource for faculty and administrators of higher education, students of higher education, librarians, researchers, graduate students, and academicians.

This chronology provides details and analysis of the intelligence failures and successes of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and suggests the applicability of lessons learned to the collection, analysis, and use of intelligence in strategic decisionmaking. The author describes how the crisis unfolded using the author's personal recollection, declassified documents, and many memoirs written by senior CIA officers and others who were participants. Lessons learned include the need to avoid having our political, analytical and intelligence collection mind-sets prevent us from acquiring and accurately analyzing intelligence about our adversaries true plans and intentions. When our national security is at stake, we should not hesitate to undertake risky intelligence collection operations including espionage, to penetrate our adversary's deceptions. We must also understand that our adversaries may not believe the gravity of our policy warnings or allow their own agendas to be influenced by diplomatic pressure.