When twenty-one-year-old Greg Bounder, a brash, wealthy college student, meets his one-time singing idol, Sally Testata, at a Scranton bar, he seizes the opportunity to create an exciting career for himself by managing her comeback. With the half-million dollar inheritance from his grandfather, Greg intends to restart the career of this forty-something, washed-up singer. But first, he must convince her, his conservative Philadelphia family, and all the doubters that he has what it takes to make it big before he blows through his inheritance. With the help of his gay brother, Marcus, a DJ in New Yorkand a lot of moneyGreg orchestrates Sallys return. The result is a whirlwind year in New York as their hit single Grind climbs up the charts, but Greg soon finds that Sally might be more than he bargained for. While struggling to reap a return on his investment, Greg needs to figure out how to keep Sally clean and out of trouble, and keep her from grabbing the wrong kind of headlines.

Ann Hulbert’s in-depth exploration of the lives of sixteen extraordinary children over the course of the past century casts new light on America’s current obsession with early achievement. The figures she profiles include math genius Norbert Wiener, founder of cybernetics; two girls whose fiction and poetry stirred debate in the 1920s; the movie superstar Shirley Temple; the African-American pianist and composer Philippa Schuyler; the chess champion Bobby Fischer; computer pioneers and “prodigious savants” with autism; and musical prodigies, present and past. Hulbert probes the changing roles of parents and teachers as well as of psychologists and a curious press. Above all, she delves into the feelings of the prodigies themselves, whose stories so intriguingly raise hopes about untapped human potential and questions about how best to nurture it.

Join Sir Cumference and the gang for more wordplay, puns, and problem solving in the clever math adventure that introduces readers to charts and graphs through an annual bake-off. Sir Cumference and Lady Di need a baker to prepare a special dessert for the annual Harvest Faire. Two bakers compete to see whose dessert is most popular. When Pia of Chartres and Bart Graf have trouble keeping track of the votes their desserts receive, they each develop a better system. Pia places a colored candy around the edges of a pie dough (like a pie chart), and Bart stacks up cookie tins (making a 3D bar graph). When there's a tie, the two chefs cook up a hybrid dessert just in time for the Faire. Puns--both literal and visual--abound in this fun adventure story with beloved characters and a solid pedagogical foundation.

Billboard magazine named The Beatles the greatest performing musical act of all time, and their albums continue to chart to this day. This is no surprise to the author, who combed through nearly 60 years of the magazine, week by week, to compile a list of every song and album that charted. The end result is an intriguing look at the band's influence, including their solo efforts. The author assigns points to the positions of songs and albums on the charts in order to create a list ranging from the least successful to the most successful. Each entry includes a picture of the album cover or single sleeve, along with an analysis of the song or album. Also provided are introductory chapters about the Beatles and an explanation of how the Billboard charts have been tabulated and changed over the years.

Using Excel 2010, it's possible to create breathtaking charts, graphs, and other data visualizations - and communicate even the most complex data more effectively than ever before. In Charts and Graphs, one of the world's leading Excel experts show exactly how to make the most of Excel 2010's unprecedented visual features. Bill Jelen ("MrExcel") explains exactly when and how to use each type of Excel chart, then walks through creating superb visuals and customizing them with themes, colors, and effects. Jelen shows how to craft charts that illuminate trends, differences, and relationships; how to create stock analysis charts; how to use Excel's flexible PivotCharts; and even how to present data on maps with Microsoft MapPoint. You will discover how to make the most of Excel 2010's new Sparklines and other in-cell visualizations; how to incorporate additional images and shapes with SmartArt; how to export charts for use outside of Excel; and how to generate dynamic, customized charts automatically with Excel VBA. There's even a full chapter on assessing the truth of charts created in Excel - and recognizing when someone's trying to lie to you! This book is part of the new MrExcel Library series. Everything Excel users need to know to communicate visually - from trend analysis to stock charting, geographical mapping to Excel 2010's new In-Cell Data Bars and Sparklines From basic through leading-edge techniques - including the automatic generation of custom charts with VBA Part of the brand-new MrExcel Library series, edited by Excel legend Bill Jelen