An anthropologist uses spelling bees as a lens to examine the unique and diverse traits of Generation Z--and why they are destined for success At first glance, Generation Z (youth born after 1997) seems to be made up of anxious overachievers, hounded by Tiger Moms and constantly tracked on social media. One would think that competitors in the National Spelling Bee -- the most popular brain sport in America -- would be the worst off. Counterintuitively, anthropologist Shalini Shankar argues that, far from being simply overstressed and overscheduled, Gen Z spelling bee competitors are learning crucial twenty-first-century skills from their high-powered lives, displaying a sophisticated understanding of self-promotion, self-direction, and social mobility. Drawing on original ethnographic research, including interviews with participants, judges, and parents, Shankar examines the outsize impact of immigrant parents and explains why Gen Z kids are on a path to success.

Folks in Moraine, Wisconsin, are buzzing about the latest swarm of trouble humming around Story Fischer… It’s a real buzz-kill when beekeeper Story Fischer gets a visit from her frantic sister. Now she has to help host a combative trio of professional food flavorists. Good thing the well-stocked shelves of Story’s grocery store, the Wild Clover, can provide the morning meal. During a pre-lunch tour of Story’s hives, however, one of the guests is found dead. Just what Story needs only days after hunky boyfriend, Hunter Wallace, finally decided to move in. As if a dead body isn’t enough to put a damper on romance, Story becomes a prime suspect when the carrot juice she brought with the breakfast fixings is found to contain poison. Now it’s up to Story to comb through the evidence and find the real perpetrator before she ends up getting stung herself...

Author of cult classics The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur offers a simple, counterintuitive cash management solution that will help small businesses break out of the doom spiral and achieve instant profitability. Conventional accounting uses the logical (albeit, flawed) formula: Sales - Expenses = Profit. The problem is, businesses are run by humans, and humans aren't always logical. Serial entrepreneur Mike Michalowicz has developed a behavioral approach to accounting to flip the formula: Sales - Profit = Expenses. Just as the most effective weight loss strategy is to limit portions by using smaller plates, Michalowicz shows that by taking profit first and apportioning only what remains for expenses, entrepreneurs will transform their businesses from cash-eating monsters to profitable cash cows. Using Michalowicz's Profit First system, readers will learn that: · Following 4 simple principles can simplify accounting and make it easier to manage a profitable business by looking at bank account balances. · A small, profitable business can be worth much more than a large business surviving on its top line. · Businesses that attain early and sustained profitability have a better shot at achieving long-term growth. With dozens of case studies, practical, step-by-step advice, and his signature sense of humor, Michalowicz has the game-changing roadmap for any entrepreneur to make money they always dreamed of.

Making a Beeline Home describes a year in the lives of the two main characters, Bobbie and Allie, ten year-olds who live in a rural community in Arkansas in 1941. While this book is fictional, it is based on the lives of many real people, real places, and many actual events. The chapters alternate with one chapter focusing on Bobbie and the next on Allie, but the lives of these two characters intertwine since they both attend the same two-room school together and live in the same small community. Readers of this book will be moved to tears by the sorrows and hard times experienced by the characters and their family members and rejoice at the closeness of family and community. Actual photographs accompany the text creating a closeness of the reader to the characters. The author interviewed actual characters from the book and included some of these primary source quotes at the beginning of each chapter.

A collection of oddly informative columns by the Arizona Republic's Clay Thompson. Newcomers and longtime Arizona residents have challenged Mr. Thompson with questions, both vital and obscure. His witty responses entertain readers daily. This is the first compilation of his work.

In the 1830s, as the Trans Appalachian economy began to stir and Europe's Industrial Revolution reached its peak, concerned Midwesterners saw opportunities and risks. Success of the Erie Canal as a link to East Coast economic markets whetted the appetites of visionaries and entrepreneurs, who saw huge opportunities. Amid this perfect storm of technology, enterprise, finance, location, and timing arose some of the earliest railroads in the Midwest. By the late 1840s three such vision-driven railroad ventures had sprung to life. Two small railroads carrying goods to Midwestern markets - the Indianapolis & Bellefontaine in Indiana and the Bellefontaine & Indiana in Ohio - spawned early enthusiasm, but few citizens would look beyond the horizon. It was the admonition of Oliver H. Smith, founder of the Indiana line, who challenged the populace to look farther: "to decide whether the immense travel and business of the west should pass round or go through central Indiana." Soon, the two local lines would crystallize in the minds of people as the "Bee Line." In Cleveland, meanwhile, a clique of committed businessmen, bankers, and politicians came together to finance the most prosperous of all early Midwestern railroads, extending from Cleveland to Columbus. Their aspirations expanded to control the larger Midwestern market from Cleveland to St. Louis. First by loans and then by bond purchases, they quickly took over the "Bee Line." Hoosier partisans' independence, however, could not be easily brushed aside. Time and again they would frustrate the attempts of the Cleveland clique, exercising a degree of autonomy inconsistent with their dependent financial underpinnings. Ultimately, they acquiesced to the reality of their situation. After the Civil War, even the group from Cleveland fell victim to unscrupulous foreign and national financiers and manipulators who had taken their places on the boards of larger trunk lines expanding throughout the Midwest. Exhaustively researched and meticulously documented, Forging the "Bee Line" Railroad, 1848-1889 is the first comprehensive scholarly work on this most important of early Midwestern railroads.

One Zentangle A Day is a beautiful interactive book teaching the principles of Zentangles as well as offering fun, related drawing exercises. Zentangles are a new trend in the drawing and paper arts world. The concept was started by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas as a way to practice focus and meditation through drawing, by using repetitive lines, marks, circles, and shapes. Each mark is called a "tangle," and you combine various tangles into patterns to create "tiles" or small square drawings. This step-by-step book is divided into 6 chapters, each with 7 daily exercises. Each exercise includes new tangles to draw in sketchbooks, teaches daily tile design, and offers tips on related art principles, and contains an inspirational "ZIA" (Zentangle Inspired Art) project on a tile that incorporates patterns, art principals, and new techniques.