This module does an excellent job at providing a feature that one would think would be built in to Joomla but is not.

This module displays items you choose, how you choose, where you choose. A specific content item can be chosen by ID, multiple IDs can be chosen, or the module can dynamically show items from a chosen section or category based on your parameters. You can indicate how many items you want, how many columns to display, and the ordering of the items. I, for example, want my homepage to show the most recent review, followed by the most recent article, followed by the most recent news. I don't want just links to them, as the built-in "Latest News" module shows, but rather the title and intro paragraph. And.... this module does exactly that.

Awesome!