A human-centric guide to solving complex problems in engineering management, from sizing teams to handling technical debt. There’s a saying that people don’t leave companies, they leave managers. Management is a key part of any organization, yet the discipline is often self-taught and unstructured. Getting to the good solutions for complex management challenges can make the difference between fulfillment and frustration for teams—and, ultimately, between the success and failure of companies. Will Larson’s An Elegant Puzzle focuses on the particular challenges of engineering management—from sizing teams to handling technical debt to performing succession planning—and provides a path to the good solutions. Drawing from his experience at Digg, Uber, and Stripe, Larson has developed a thoughtful approach to engineering management for leaders of all levels at companies of all sizes. An Elegant Puzzle balances structured principles and human-centric thinking to help any leader create more effective and rewarding organizations for engineers to thrive in.

Hosier shows academic librarians how to use context when teaching information literacy, an approach that offers a substantive and enduring impact on students' lifelong learning. Librarians know that information literacy is much more complex and nuanced than the basic library research skill that it's often portrayed as; in fact, as outlined by the ACRL Framework, research is a contextual activity. But the settings in which we teach often constrain our ability to take a more layered approach. This book not only shows you how to teach information literacy as something other than a basic skill, but also how to do it in whatever mode of teaching you're most often engaged in, whether that's a credit-bearing course, a one-shot session, a tutorial, a reference desk interaction, or a library program. Taking you through each step of the research process, this book shares ideas for adding context while exploring topics such as how conversations about context can be integrated into lessons on common information literacy topics; examples of the six genres of research and suggested course outlines for each; ensuring that context strategies fit within the ACRL Framework; questions for reflection in teaching each step of the research process; four different roles that sources can play when researching a topic; helping students refine a topic that is drawing too many or too few sources; cultivating students to become good decision-makers for the best type of research sources to use depending on their need; and how to address the shortcomings of checklist tools like the CRAAP test.

Hit-songwriter/educator Andrea Stolpe shares her ten-step songwriting process that will help you craft lyrics that communicate heart to heart with your audience. She advises on how to: streamline and accelerate your writing process; use lyric structures and techniques at the heart of countless hit songs; write even when you're not inspired; and more.

As lawyers, we must not, in hot pursuit of common law, outrun common sense. The dread of that eventuality prompted this book. Learned Writing promotes common sense in legal language. Plain language, which is commonsensical, broadens access to legal documents, thus democratizing the law. If democracy is government of the people, by the people, and for the people, law is the language in which government interacts with the people—it is the language of democracy. The people whose government speaks through law must understand what is said. No democratic society should brook legalese, a dense, verbose dialect known only to lawyers. What then should society do to redress the lawyer-induced obscurity? A Shakespearean character had an alarming proposal: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Apparently, that proposal was not enthusiastically endorsed, which explains why we’re still here. A milder remedy—enrolling lawyers in language classes—has been muted, which explains why this book is in your hands. Learned Writing motivates lawyers to prefer plain language to the legalese and verbosity that have besmirched legal writing for centuries. This book is as sweeping a treatment of its subject as you can find anywhere.

“Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson This book is for people who also believe personal freedom is the most important thing in life. In our free world, we can do what want, spend time with people we like, and have a career that gives us joy. And yet, we don’t use our freedom. Why is that? The problem is that we’re held captive by ourselves. On a deeper level, we all strive for the same thing: To be free. It’s in our nature. Every human has the desire and the need to be free. What It Takes To Be Free will lead you on the path to personal freedom. It’s a highly practical guide that’s based on timeless wisdom and personal experience. You’re the ruler of your own kingdom. You can do anything you want, spend time with people you like, and have a career that you love. If you’re willing to do what it takes, you will be free to do those things.

Writing about Learning and Teaching in Higher Education offers detailed guidance to scholars at all stages-experienced and new academics, graduate students, and undergraduates-regarding how to write about learning and teaching in higher education. It evokes established practices, recommends new ones, and challenges readers to expand notions of scholarship by describing reasons for publishing across a range of genres, from the traditional empirical research article to modes such as stories and social media that are newly recognized in scholarly arenas. The book provides practical guidance for scholars in writing each genre-and in getting them published. To illustrate how choices about writing play out in practice, we share throughout the book our own experiences as well as reflections from a range of scholars, including both highly experienced, widely published experts and newcomers to writing about learning and teaching in higher education. The diversity of voices we include is intended to complement the variety of genres we discuss, enacting as well as arguing for an embrace of multiplicity in writing about learning and teaching in higher education.

There's a mantra that real writers know but wannabe writers don’t. And the secret phrase is this: NOBODY WANTS TO READ YOUR SH*T. Recognizing this painful truth is the first step in the writer's transformation from amateur to professional. From Chapter Four: “When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, you develop empathy. You acquire the skill that is indispensable to all artists and entrepreneurs—the ability to switch back and forth in your imagination from your own point of view as writer/painter/seller to the point of view of your reader/gallery-goer/customer. You learn to ask yourself with ev­ery sentence and every phrase: Is this interesting? Is it fun or challenging or inventive? Am I giving the reader enough? Is she bored? Is she following where I want to lead her?