The Big Book of Exit Strategies


Book Description

Praise for Jamaal May: "Linguistically acrobatic [and] beautifully crafted. . . . [Jamaal May's] poems, exquisitely balanced by a sharp intelligence mixed with earnestness, makes his debut a marvel."—Publishers Weekly Following Jamaal May's award-winning debut collection, Hum (2013), these new poems explore parallel landscapes of the poet's interior and an insidious American condition. Using dark humor that helps illuminate the pains of maturity and loss of imagination, May uncovers language like a skilled architect—digging up bones of the past to expose what lies beneath the surface of the fragile human condition. From: "Ask Where I've Been": Ask about the tornado of fists. The blows landed. If you can watch it all—the spit and blood frozen against snow, you can probably tell I am the too-narrow road winding out of a crooked city built of laughter, abandon, feathers and drums. Ask only if you can watch streetlights bow, bridges arc, and power lines sag, and still believe what matters most is not where I bend but where I am growing. Jamaal May is a poet, editor, and filmmaker from Detroit, Michigan, where he taught poetry in public schools and worked as a freelance audio engineer and touring performer. His poetry won the 2013 Indiana Review Poetry Prize and appears in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, the Believer, NER, and the Kenyon Review. May has earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College as well as fellowships from Cave Canem and The Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University. He founded the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Press.




The Virtues of Exit


Book Description

Successful democracies rely on an active citizenry. They require citizens to participate by voting, serving on juries, and running for office. But what happens when those citizens purposefully opt out of politics? Exit—the act of leaving—is often thought of as purely instinctual, a part of the human "fight or flight" response, or, alternatively, motivated by an antiparticipatory, self-centered impulse. However, in this eye-opening book, Jennet Kirkpatrick argues that the concept of exit deserves closer scrutiny. She names and examines several examples of political withdrawal, from Thoreau decamping to Walden to slaves fleeing to the North before the Civil War. In doing so, Kirkpatrick not only explores what happens when people make the decision to remove themselves but also expands our understanding of exit as a political act, illustrating how political systems change in the aftermath of actual or threatened departure. Moreover, she reframes the decision to refuse to play along—whether as a fugitive slave, a dissident who is exiled but whose influence remains, or a government in exile—as one that shapes political discourse, historically and today.




Exit, Voice, and Loyalty


Book Description

An innovator in contemporary thought on economic and political development looks here at decline rather than growth. Albert O. Hirschman makes a basic distinction between alternative ways of reacting to deterioration in business firms and, in general, to dissatisfaction with organizations: one, “exit,” is for the member to quit the organization or for the customer to switch to the competing product, and the other, “voice,” is for members or customers to agitate and exert influence for change “from within.” The efficiency of the competitive mechanism, with its total reliance on exit, is questioned for certain important situations. As exit often undercuts voice while being unable to counteract decline, loyalty is seen in the function of retarding exit and of permitting voice to play its proper role. The interplay of the three concepts turns out to illuminate a wide range of economic, social, and political phenomena. As the author states in the preface, “having found my own unifying way of looking at issues as diverse as competition and the two-party system, divorce and the American character, black power and the failure of ‘unhappy’ top officials to resign over Vietnam, I decided to let myself go a little.”




Exit Strategy


Book Description

Righteously angry, riotously funny, and wise to the tensions between abstract policy and lived experience, Ike Holter's play Exit Strategy centers on vivid, unforgettable characters struggling to maintain faith in a vocation that is being determinedly undermined. Drawing from the headlines, Exit Strategy is set in Chicago and tells the story of a fictional public high school slated for closure at the end of the year. Despite funding cuts, bureaucrats run amok, apathy, and a rodent infestation, a small, multiracial group of teachers launch a last-minute effort to save the school, and put their careers, futures, and safety in the hands of a fast-talking administrator who may be in over his head. The tenuous situation also raises fears and anxieties among students, and within the volcanic neighborhood that is home to the school. Holter has said that Exit Strategy was inspired by the 2013 mass closure of forty-nine Chicago public schools, which displaced nearly 12,000 children—the majority of directly impacted students were African American and Latinx. Hailed as "riveting," "sharp," and "richly metaphoric" by critics, the play indicts how we educate our children in big American cities, and shows why gaps between haves and have-nots continue to grow. Exit Strategy is one of seven plays in Ike Holter's cycle of works set in Chicago or Chicago-inspired neighborhoods.




Exit


Book Description

Lawrence-Lightfoot is enthralled by exits: long farewells, quick goodbyes, sudden endings, the ordinary and the extraordinary. She explores the ways we leave one thing and move on to the next in an enthusiastic, uplifting lesson about ourselves and the role of transition in our lives.




Last Exit


Book Description

Fresh from winning the Hugo and Nebula Awards, Max Gladstone weaves elements of American myth—the muscle car, the open road, the white-hatted cowboy—into Last Exit, a deeply emotional tale where his characters must find their own truths if they are to survive. Ten years ago, Zelda led a band of merry adventurers whose knacks let them travel to alternate realities and battle the black rot that threatened to unmake each world. Zelda was the warrior; Ish could locate people anywhere; Ramon always knew what path to take; Sarah could turn catastrophe aside. Keeping them all connected: Sal, Zelda’s lover and the group's heart. Until their final, failed mission, when Sal was lost. When they all fell apart. Ten years on, Ish, Ramon, and Sarah are happy and successful. Zelda is alone, always traveling, destroying rot throughout the US. When it boils through the crack in the Liberty Bell, the rot gives Zelda proof that Sal is alive, trapped somewhere in the alts. Zelda’s getting the band back together—plus Sal’s young cousin June, who has a knack none of them have ever seen before. As relationships rekindle, the friends begin to believe they can find Sal and heal all the worlds. It’s not going to be easy, but they’ve faced worse before. But things have changed, out there in the alts. And in everyone's hearts. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Exit Zero


Book Description

Winner of CLR James Book Prize from the Working Class Studies Association and 2nd Place for the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing. In 1980, Christine J. Walley’s world was turned upside down when the steel mill in Southeast Chicago where her father worked abruptly closed. In the ensuing years, ninety thousand other area residents would also lose their jobs in the mills—just one example of the vast scale of deindustrialization occurring across the United States. The disruption of this event propelled Walley into a career as a cultural anthropologist, and now, in Exit Zero, she brings her anthropological perspective home, examining the fate of her family and that of blue-collar America at large. Interweaving personal narratives and family photos with a nuanced assessment of the social impacts of deindustrialization, Exit Zero is one part memoir and one part ethnography— providing a much-needed female and familial perspective on cultures of labor and their decline. Through vivid accounts of her family’s struggles and her own upward mobility, Walley reveals the social landscapes of America’s industrial fallout, navigating complex tensions among class, labor, economy, and environment. Unsatisfied with the notion that her family’s turmoil was inevitable in the ever-forward progress of the United States, she provides a fresh and important counternarrative that gives a new voice to the many Americans whose distress resulting from deindustrialization has too often been ignored. This book is part of a project that also includes a documentary film.




Involuntary Exit


Book Description

It can take less than a minute to get fired. Less than a minute to hear the words that change your life as you’ve known it. You’re stunned, shocked, humiliated—because your career has defined your life and you’ve been blindsided. You’re a company Loyalist with a capital L, and you’ve been sucker punched professionally. How do you even talk about this? Countless books focus on leadership and resilience, but none of them take you through what actually happens to women leaders who are suddenly let go, or who endure untenable circumstances and ultimately fire themselves. None of them take you, step by step, through the emotional process of acceptance and beginning again. And that’s where Involuntary Exit comes in. With advice for every unexpected twist, turn, and emotional trigger, this book is based on author Robin Merle’s experience at the top of billion-dollar organizations, as well as her interviews with accomplished women who were suddenly severed from their organizations and navigated their way back to success. The real-life examples she offers in these pages prove that you’re not alone—and that you, too, will get through this. Whether you’ve been fired or need to move on, Involuntary Exit will help you rediscover your value and emerge as a stronger leader on your own terms.




No Exit


Book Description

“What a box of tricks! This full-throttle thriller, dark and driving, rivals Agatha Christie for sheer ingenuity and James Patterson for flat-out speed. Swift, sharp, and relentless.” — A. J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window A brilliant, edgy thriller about four strangers, a blizzard, a kidnapped child, and a determined young woman desperate to unmask and outwit a vicious psychopath. A kidnapped little girl locked in a stranger’s van. No help for miles. What would you do? On her way to Utah to see her dying mother, college student Darby Thorne gets caught in a fierce blizzard in the mountains of Colorado. With the roads impassable, she’s forced to wait out the storm at a remote highway rest stop. Inside are some vending machines, a coffee maker, and four complete strangers. Desperate to find a signal to call home, Darby goes back out into the storm . . . and makes a horrifying discovery. In the back of the van parked next to her car, a little girl is locked in an animal crate. Who is the child? Why has she been taken? And how can Darby save her? There is no cell phone reception, no telephone, and no way out. One of her fellow travelers is a kidnapper. But which one? Trapped in an increasingly dangerous situation, with a child’s life and her own on the line, Darby must find a way to break the girl out of the van and escape. But who can she trust? With exquisitely controlled pacing, Taylor Adams diabolically ratchets up the tension with every page. Full of terrifying twists and hairpin turns, No Exit will have you on the edge of your seat and leave you breathless.




Exit to Freedom


Book Description

"The only firsthand account of a wrongful conviction overturned by DNA evidence"--Cover.