What happens when three financial industry whiz kids and certified baseball nuts take over an ailing major league franchise and implement the same strategies that fueled their success on Wall Street? In the case of the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, an American League championship happens—the culmination of one of the greatest turnarounds in baseball history. In The Extra 2%, financial journalist and sportswriter Jonah Keri chronicles the remarkable story of one team’s Cinderella journey from divisional doormat to World Series contender. When former Goldman Sachs colleagues Stuart Sternberg and Matthew Silverman assumed control of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2005, it looked as if they were buying the baseball equivalent of a penny stock. But the incoming regime came armed with a master plan: to leverage their skill at trading, valuation, and management to build a model twenty-first-century franchise that could compete with their bigger, stronger, richer rivals—and prevail. Together with “boy genius” general manager Andrew Friedman, the new Rays owners jettisoned the old ways of doing things, substituting their own innovative ideas about employee development, marketing and public relations, and personnel management. They exorcized the “devil” from the team’s nickname, developed metrics that let them take advantage of undervalued aspects of the game, like defense, and hired a forward-thinking field manager as dedicated to unconventional strategy as they were. By quantifying the game’s intangibles—that extra 2% that separates a winning organization from a losing one—they were able to deliver to Tampa Bay something that Billy Beane’s “Moneyball” had never brought to Oakland: an American League pennant. A book about what happens when you apply your business skills to your life’s passion, The Extra 2% is an informative and entertaining case study for any organization that wants to go from worst to first.

Let's face it. Everyone in the world today is in sales in some capacity. Some of us are selling a potential spouse. Some of us are selling a product. Some of us are selling a service. Some of us are selling information. Is there a difference? In this book, David R. Carothers dives into a series of actions you can take that will move your sales game from good to best-in-class regardless of what you are selling!What if you discovered the difference between you being a good salesperson and being a great salesperson only requires an extra 2 minutes of your time? Would you believe it? In "The Extra 2 MInutes" David unpacks over 30 years of sales experience to show you the basic, easily executable tasks you can complete to separate the gap between you and your competition. By focusing on giving your prospects and clients an unforgettable buyer's journey culminating in an awesome client experience, you will raise your compensation, close rates and client-retention to a level you may not have dreamed possible. While it will take you longer than 2 minutes to read this book from cover to cover, it has been formatted in such a way that you can read it in small snippets and immediately put the information to use. Not only will you receive easy to read examples and real world stories of success, each chapter comes with a specific activity and the supporting resources needed to implement that process into your daily routine.

Join George Beard and Harold Hutchins for a wedgie-powered wonder! The All New Captain Underpants Extra-Crunchy Book O' Fun 2! Word-searches, mazes, quizzes, crosswords and truly disgusting jokes combine to make this a must for any fan of Captain Underpants and Super Diaper Baby! Have you read your Underpants today?

Less than a hundred years in the future, pollution, economic disaster, and the rapacious greed of the corporate oligarchy has brought America to its knees and created dystopian urban nightmares, of which L.A. may be the worst. Curtis, Japh, and Jool are film extras, who—with the help of a couple of very gutsy women—survived being anonymous players in a "live-action" film in which getting killed on-screen meant getting killed for real. Surviving the shoot made them rich enough to escape the post-apocalyptic Hell that L.A. has become. But their survival was not what Panoply Studios' CEO Val Margolian had in mind, especially since it cost his company millions. Now he's taking his revenge. After several plainclothes police are found dead in the former extras' new home, the bucolic, peaceful town of Sunrise, California, the entire town is subjected to Margolian's invidious plan to punish the entire town...and make a fortune doing it. Margolian has created toxic, murderous wasp-like mechanical creatures to set upon the people of Sunrise, while his film crew captures the carnage in what promises to be the bloodiest "live-action" film yet. With their haven from L.A. besieged by the deadly assault, the former extras—and their fellow townspeople—are faced with a grim task: to defeat the creatures and take back their town and their freedom. Michael Shea's Assault on Sunrise is a saga of courage and sacrifice in a world gone mad. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Charlie Joe Jackson, the most reluctant reader ever born, made it his mission in the first book to get through middle school without reading a single book from cover to cover. Now he's back, and trying desperately to get straight A's in order to avoid going to academic camp for the summer. In order to do this, he will have to betray his friend, lose the girl of his dreams, and end up acting in a school play about the inventor of paper towels. Charlie Joe's not exactly the "school play kind of guy", but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Chronicles the first season of baseball's senior league for retired major league ballplayers and includes comments from the league's founder and the star players who returned to the game

At the end of Specials, the conclusion to the Uglies trilogy, things in Tally's futuristic world had stabilised. The walls between the social classes - the uglies, pretties and specials - had been torn down. So Tally took off to live on her own in the wild. Fast forward... Tally discovers another brand new world. In Extras, it's all about who you know, and how much you have. It's just like LA. Only Paris and Nicole are way dead...