The Rallying Point tells the story of the creation of The Black American Heritage Flag, its creators' struggle to promote it as a symbol of pride and heritage for Black Americans during the Civil Rights era and beyond,

A smart and surprising political inventory for how America can reunite and revitalize in a time of crisis. Written by an admired leader of the Republican party, Rally Point: Five Tasks to Unite the Country and Revitalize the American Dream looks past the 2016 election, past the finger pointing and conventional political thinking, to focus on clear, primary principles that conservatives must debate and defend to protect the future of America. Raised in a working-class family in upstate New York, the first in his family to go to college, paid for in part by his service in the National Guard, Chris Gibson rose from Private to Colonel in the Army, including combat command in the storied 82nd Airborne Division. RALLY POINT is his story: what he's learned from the "School of Hard Knocks" and how he's applied those precious life lessons during his service in Iraq and in Congress. Drawn from a deep appreciation of history and American exceptionalism, Gibson provides incisive and frank analysis of the current political environment, including President Trump, and provides a roadmap based on time-tested Founding principles to help unite our country and revitalize the American Dream. RALLY POINT is a thoughtful, compelling, enjoyable read - a must for serious-minded Americans looking for answers in this challenging political environment.

3 new methods to help you start your Agile project. 1 new way to estimate effort, finally making sense of points estimation.Back in 2007, what started as a new approach to effort estimation created, in the following years, three methods aimed at improving the Scrum project predictability while engaging the Scrum Team around a collaborative vision. Together, they support the Rally-Point Backlog approach which is shared for the first time with this book. The first method, Handle It or Hand It Over, lists the basic winning conditions as a project progresses through each of its periods. The second method, CrumbScale Backlog (which triggered this whole undertaking), targets the initial creation of the backlog and the assignment of effort points. The third and final method, Easy-Normal-Hard, helps manage complexity within the backlog.Get more details at RallyPointBacklog.comThis book is the first publication introducing the CrumbScale effort estimation method. After 10 years of being used and perfected, it was high time to share this tool through more than word of mouth. With CrumbScale, instead of estimating each Story one at a time, the distribution of the effort Points happens in a two step process involving all of the Stories at once.Get the cheat-sheet and more details at CrumbScale.com

The definitive history of South Carolina's Confederate flag controversy and 2005 finalist for Popular Culture Book of the Year from ForeWord Magazine.

Sexual identities are dangerous, Michel Foucault tells us. Categories of desire harden into stereotypes by which the forces of normalization hold us and judge us. In Bodies and Pleasures, Ladelle McWhorter reads Foucault from an original and personal angle, motivated by the differences this experience has made in her life. At the same time, her analysis advances discussion of key issues in Foucault scholarship: the genealogical critique, the status of the subject and humanism, essentialism versus social construction, and the relationships between identity, community, and political action. Weaving her own experience of coming to grips with her lesbian sexual identity into her readings of Foucault's most recent writings on sexuality and power, McWhorter argues compellingly that Foucault's texts should be read less for the arguments they advance and more for their transformative effect. By exploring bodies and pleasures—gardening, line dancing, or doing philosophy, for example—McWhorter shows that it isn't necessary to conform with socially recognized sexual identities. Bodies and Pleasures takes the reader beyond unexplored norms and imposed identities as it points the way toward a personal politics, ethics, and style that challenges our sexual selves.