Developing inner wisdom as a leadership strength

Leading with Spirit, Presence, and Authenticity presents the perspectives of leaders, social scientists, and educators from around the world on the topic of developing inner wisdom. Structured around the notions of spirit, presence, and authenticity, the book encourages readers to reflect on their own lives as they read about their colleagues' diverse experiences, all in an effort to address difficult global systems challenges with a foundation of various wisdom lineages and practices.

Each chapter is introduced by an editor with deep background experience in the topic at hand, and the book includes an examination of research on the essential nature of authenticity among leaders. Stories of leadership initiative from across nations illustrate the truly global nature of leadership inspiration, and accounts of teaching mindfulness, guiding leaders, and leading in the arts and humanities integrate critical theory with authentic leadership development. Topics include:

• Subtle interdependencies involved in modern leadership
• The contribution of sociological mindfulness to leadership education
• Authentic leadership as communicated through technology
• The role of spirit, and what the world needs from leaders

A diverse mix of contributors, including a Sufi teacher, a social science journal editor, and a CEO, provide a truly inclusive examination of the ways a leader is defined by self and others. Leading with Spirit, Presence, and Authenticity, a volume in the International Leadership Series Building Leadership Bridges from the International Leadership Association, helps connect ways of researching, imagining, and experiencing leadership across cultures, over time, and around the world.

One day a couple of years ago, 300 migrants were kidnapped between the remote, dusty border towns of Altar, Mexico, and Sasabe, Arizona. Over half of them were never heard from again. Óscar Martínez, a young writer from El Salvador, was in Altar at the time of the abduction, and his story of the migrant disappearances is only one of the harrowing stories he tells after spending two years traveling up and down the migrant trail from Central America to the US border. More than a quarter of a million Central Americans alone make this increasingly dangerous journey each year, and last year 18,000 of them were kidnapped.

Martínez writes in beautiful, lyrical prose about clinging to the tops of freight trains; finding respite, work and hardship in shelters and brothels; and riding shotgun with the border patrol. Here is the first book to illuminate this harsh mass migration in the age of the narcotraficantes.

NO POWERS? NO PROBLEM.

Ever wondered what would happen if you tried to be a superhero? What would happen if an ordinary guy, with no powers or training, put on a suit and came face-to-face with the criminal underworld? Find out in Kick-Ass, the blockbuster movie from director Matthew Vaughn, based on the bestselling comic book by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.

Meet Dave Lizewski: high school student, comic book fan - and the self-styled superhero known as Kick-Ass. His profile really takes off when his exploits end up on YouTube, but then he meets 'the real deal' in the shape of pint-sized lethal weapon Hit-Girl and her intimidating partner Big Daddy. Things start to get really serious. And very, very violent...

With Mark Millar as your guide, Kick-Ass: Creating the Comic, Making the Movie gives you the full inside story of how this superhero phenomenon went from his little lined pad to huge Hollywood movie in record time, featuring:

- Millar's early comic book script pages
- Eye-popping Romita art, including new pages drawn especially for the movie
- Exclusive contributions from the cast and crew
- Hundreds of movie photos, sketches, storyboards and pieces of production art

John King Fairbank was the West's doyen on China, and this book is the full and final expression of his lifelong engagement with this vast ancient civilization. It remains a masterwork without parallel. The distinguished historian Merle Goldman brings the book up to date, covering reforms in the post-Mao period through the early years of the twenty-first century, including the leadership of Hu Jintao. She also provides an epilogue discussing the changes in contemporary China that will shape the nation in the years to come.

This is a unique collection of new and recently-published articles which debate the merits of virtue-theoretic approaches to the core epistemological issues of knowledge and justified belief. The readings all contribute to our understanding of the relative importance, for a theory of justified belief, of the reliability of our cognitive faculties and of the individuals responsibility in gathering and weighing evidence. Highlights of the readings include direct exchanges between leading exponents of this approach and their critics.