From bestselling author Jon Gordon and rising star Damon West comes The Coffee Bean: an illustrated fable that teaches readers how to transform their environment, overcome challenges, and create positive change. Life is often difficult. It can be harsh, stressful, and feel like a pot of boiling hot water. The environments we find ourselves in can change, weaken, or harden us, and test who we truly are. We can be like the carrot that weakens in the pot or like the egg that hardens. Or, we can be like the coffee bean and discover the power inside us to transform our environment. The Coffee Bean is an inspiring tale that follows Abe, a young man filled with stress and fear as he faces challenges and pressure at school and home. One day after class, his teacher shares with him the life-changing lesson of the coffee bean, and this powerful message changes the way he thinks, acts, and sees the world. Abe discovers that instead of letting his environment change him for the worse, he can transform any environment he is in for the better. Equipped with this transformational truth, Abe embarks on an inspirational journey to live his life like the coffee bean. Wherever his life takes him, from school, to the military, to the business world, Abe demonstrates how this simple lesson can unleash the unstoppable power within you. A delightful, quick read, The Coffee Bean is purposely written and designed for readers of all ages so that everyone can benefit from this transformational lesson. This is a book and message that, when read and shared, has the power to change your life and the world around you. You just have to decide: are you a carrot, egg, or coffee bean?

PREORDER YOUR COPY OF BEFORE WE FORGET KINDNESS, the fifth book in the best-selling and much loved series, NOW! *NOW AN LA TIMES BESTSELLER* *OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD* *AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER* If you could go back in time, who would you want to meet? In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee—the chance to travel back in time. Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn’t so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold. Heartwarming, wistful, mysterious and delightfully quirky, Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s internationally bestselling novel explores the age-old question: What would you change if you could travel back in time? Meet more wonderful characters in the rest of the captivating Before the Coffee Gets Cold series: Tales from the Cafe Before Your Memory Fades Before We Say Goodbye And the upcoming BEFORE WE FORGET KINDESS

In a small diner at a location so remote that it stands in the middle of the middle of nowhere, John-a man in a hurry-is at a literal and figurative crossroads. Intent only on refueling before moving along on his road trip, John finds sustenance of an entirely different kind: in addition to the specials of the day, the menu lists three questions that all diners are encouraged to consider: Why are you here? Do you fear death? Are you fulfilled? With the guidance of three people he meets at the cafe, John embarks on a quest for answers that metaphorically takes him from the executive suites of the advertising world to the surf of Hawaii's coastline. Along the way, he discovers a new way to look at his life and relationships... and just how much you can learn from a green sea turtle. The Why Cafe will get readers young and free and older and entrenched to rethink their personal yardstick for success. Charming, simple, and inspiring, it will change lives.

Coffee Culture: Local experiences, Global Connections explores coffee as (1) a major commodity that shapes the lives of millions of people; (2) a product with a dramatic history; (3) a beverage with multiple meanings and uses (energizer, comfort food, addiction, flavouring, and confection); (4) an inspiration for humor and cultural critique; (5) a crop that can help protect biodiversity yet also threaten the environment; (6) a health risk and a health food; and (7) a focus of alternative trade efforts. This book presents coffee as a commodity that ties the world together, from the coffee producers and pickers who tend the plantations in tropical nations, to the middlemen and processors, to the consumers who drink coffee without ever having to think about how the drink reached their hands.

Coffee, comforters, king-sized beds, gel toothpaste, razors, underwear, the morning shower-all activities and objects we have tended to pay no attention to-until the publication of this book. In a series of short vignettes endearingly illustrated by the author, Arthur Asa Berger gives Americans a profound way to understand their morning rituals. Have you ever considered, for instance, that the digital clock, by producing free-floating liquid numerals disconnecting us from both time past and time future, could be interpreted as a metaphor for the alienation many people feel in contemporary society? Or consider our nightclothes: The pajama is the most immediate witness to our sexual activities; thus, we cover our pajamas with a bathrobe to guard against the anxiety of being revealed to other family members. The pajama is intricately connected to human shame. Bloom's Morning, with thirty-six short chapters bracketed by brief essays on the nature of semiotic analysis, is a perfect book for the inquisitive mind. It is chock-full of valuable and quirky nuggets from this most interesting of social commentators-items that, taken together, give us a new vision through which to understand ourselves.

Coffee is one of the most popular drinks in the world but how does the production influence chemistry and quality? This book covers coffee production, quality and chemistry from the plant to the cup. Written by an international collection of contributors in the field who concentrate on coffee research, it is edited expertly to ensure quality of content, consistency and organization across the chapters. Aimed at advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers and accompanied by a sister volume covering how health is influenced by the consumption of coffee, these titles provide an impactful and accessible guide to the current research in the field.

A Starbucks executive reveals how to draw on the successful coffee-house chain's examples in order to promote business success, sharing inside stories about key turning points in Starbucks' history to illustrate how the company came to embrace its philosophy about putting people ahead of profits.

In Temporary, a young woman’s workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it’s shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, “there is nothing more personal than doing your job.” This riveting quest, at once hilarious and profound, will resonate with anyone who has ever done their best at work, even when the work is only temporary.

West looks at the process from which coffee is grown, gathered, sorted, shipped, and served from the highlands of Papua New Guinea to coffee shops in far away places. She shows how coffee becomes a commodity, the different forms of labor involved, and the way that coffee shapes the lives and understandings of those who grow, process, export, sell and consume coffee.