Stephen Manes

Paul Andrews

Gates reveals the guiding genius behind the unparalleled success of the Microsoft Corporation-- the biggest and most profitable personal computer software company in history-- and exposes the intensely competitive tactics that help it dominate the desktops of America. Chairman and co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates is the most powerful person in the computer industry and the youngest self-made billionaire in history. His company's DOS and Windows programs are such universal standards that more than nine out of ten personal computers depend on Microsoft software. Under the "Microsoft Everywhere" rallying cry, Gates intends to expand his company's worldwide dominance to office equipment, communications, and home entertainment. Vivid and definitive, Gates details the behind the scenes history of the personal computer industry and its movers and shakers, from Apple to IBM, from Steve Jobs to Ross Perot. Uncovering the inside stories of the bitter battle for control of the expanding personal computing market, Gates is a bracing, comprehensive portrait of the industry, the company, and the man-- and what they mean for a future where software is everything.

How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry--and Made Himself the Richest Man in America

Gates

Be/perfect Person/

Obnoxious Jerks, The

With the advice of a book he borrows from the library, Milo Crinkley tries to make himself into a perfect person in only three days.

Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days!

Oscar becomes obsessed with the new video machine in Hughie's pizza parlor and finds himself involved in an unusual adventure with aliens from outer space.

The First Strange Thing that Happened to Oscar Noodleman

That Game from Outer Space

The Oscar J. Noodleman Television Network

CHICKEN TREK

A diminutive red-haired man no bigger than a hen's egg, Rhode Island Red leaves his home among the chickens and travels throughout Rhode Island, becoming a legendary figure through his many heroic exploits.

Some of the Adventures of Rhode Island Red

Comedy High (Point)

When Arnold Schlemp gets the fancy new shoes that were advertised on T.V. for his birthday, he gets a lot more than he bargained for.

It's New! It's Improved! It's Terrible!

In search of perfection, Milo Crinkley earnestly tries to follow the loony instructions he finds in a library books--and learns that there are more important things in life than being perfect. "Manes' style (is) reminiscent of Daniel Pinkwater's topped with a dash of Kurt Vonnegut . . . awfully funny".--Booklist.

In a nation never shy about elevating business tycoons to mythic stature, Bill Gates--the youngest self-made billionaire in history--remains unique. Gates reveals precisely how Bill Gates became the most influential person in the computer industry, and why he is idolized, hated, and feared.

Here's the best-selling sequel to the hilarious Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days!Is is possible? Can an ordinary kid become a multimillionaire in one short week?Jason Nozzle thought so. What gave him the idea was a book he dug up in the park--a book called Make Four Million Dollars by Next Thursday! The author, Dr. K. Pinkerton Silverfish, didn't look like a multimillionaire, but he claimed to be the world's leading authority on getting rich quick.Rich! The more Jason thought about it, the better it sounded. Jason took the book home and tried to follow its instructions. But that wasn't as easy as it seemed.Did Jason become four million dollars richer in a matter of days? More important, can you? You'll find the hilarious answers here. Once again, noted author Stephen Manes teams up with noted authority K. Pinkerton Silverfish--and you'll laugh all the way to the bank!

Make Four Million Dollars by Next Thursday!

When city officials try to close down the local video parlor because they think it is less than beneficial for the children, the young people of the town form Video, a protest group.

Video War

Max and his little brother Adam make a bet about eating chocolate-covered ants.

Chocolate-covered Ants

The internationally acclaimed new book that takes you behind the scenes to reveal how ballet really happens: In a scuffed-up studio, a veteran dancer transmits the magic of an eighty-year-old ballet to a performer barely past drinking age. In a converted barn, an indomitable teacher creates ballerinas as she has for more than half a century. In a monastic mirrored room, dancers from as near as New Jersey and as far as Mongolia learn works as old as the nineteenth century and as new as this morning. Snowflakes "zooms in on an intimate view of one full season in the life of one of America's top ballet companies and schools: Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet. But it also tracks the Land of Ballet to venues as celebrated as New York and Monte Carlo and as seemingly ordinary as Bellingham, Washington and small-town Pennsylvania. Never before has a book taken readers backstage for such a wide-ranging view of the ballet world from the wildly diverse perspectives of dancers, choreographers, stagers, teachers, conductors, musicians, rehearsal pianists, lighting directors, costumers, stage managers, scenic artists, marketers, fundraisers, students, and even pointe shoe fitters--often in their own remarkably candid words. The book follows characters as colorful as they are talented. Versatile dancers from around the globe team up with novice choreographers and those as renowned as Susan Stroman, Christopher Wheeldon, and Twyla Tharp to create art on deadline. At the book's center is Peter Boal, a former New York City Ballet star in his third year as PNB's artistic director, as he manages conflicting constituencies with charm, tact, rationality and diplomacy. Readers look over Boal's shoulder as he makes tough decisions about programming, casting, scheduling and budgeting that eventually lead the calm, low-key leader to declare that in his job, "You have to be willing to be hated." "Snowflakes" shows how ballet is made, funded, and sold. It escorts you front and center to the kick zone of studio rehearsals. It takes you to the costume shop where elegant tutus and gowns are created from scratch. It brings you backstage to see sets and lighting come alive while stagehands get lovingly snarky and obscene on their headsets. It sits you down in meetings where budgets get slashed and dreams get funded--and axed. It shows you the inner workings of "Nutcracker, " from kids' charming auditions to no-nonsense marketing meetings, from snow bags in the flies to dancing snowflakes who curse salty flurries that land on their tongues. It follows the tempestuous assembly of a version of "Romeo and Juliet" that runs afoul of so much pressure, disease, injury, and blood that the dancers begin to call it cursed. "Snowflakes" uncovers the astounding way ballets, with no common form of written preservation, are handed down from generation to generation through the prodigious memories of brilliant athletes who also happen to be artists. It visits cattle-call auditions and rigorous classes, tells the stories of dancers whose parents sacrificed for them and dancers whose parents refused to. It meets the resolute woman who created a dance school more than fifty years ago in a Carlisle, Pennsylvania barn and grew it into one of America's most reliable ballerina factories. It shows ballet's appeal to kids from low-income neighborhoods and board members who live in mansions. Shattering longstanding die-for-your-art cliches, this book uncovers the real drama in the daily lives of fiercely dedicated artists in slippers and pointe shoes-and the musicians, stagehands, costumers, donors and administrators who support them. "Where Snowflakes Dance and Swear: Inside the Land of Ballet" brings readers the exciting truth of how ballet actually happens.

Stephen Manes

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