Word: townes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...anybody in this tiny (pop. 4,000) mountain ski resort town why you shouldn't feed wild bears, and you'll hear a rueful answer. They move in. For years the residents indulged the neighboring wild bears, treating them as entertainers. Restaurant owners left their garbage Dumpsters open so tourists would gather. Locals like Mammoth Times editor Wally Hofmann brought houseguests. "We'd sit in the car with a bowl of popcorn and wait to see a bear," he remembers. Then the bears stopped going home. They settled down to live in abandoned buildings and started having cubs...
...been its secret weapon. Its website deftly mixes simplicity with depth, offering book reviews and personalized recommendations. Orders automatically generate a thank-you e-mail. And Amazon will hunt down any title you can't find, even out-of-print books, with the friendly zealousness of a small-town Midwesterner giving you directions to the doughnut shop. "Word of mouth is incredibly powerful online," explains Jeffrey Bezos, 34, Amazon's founder and CEO. "A dissatisfied customer can tell 1,000 people in a few minutes." Scott Ehrens, a managing director at Bear Stearns, says Amazon "understands how to treat customers...
RUNNER-UP Snow. Written and illustrated by Uri Shulevitz A town full of skeptical, eccentrically shaped adults is transformed into a playground by the snow everyone says won't fall. What's not to love...
...Francisco area, Amadeo Peter Giannini was thrown from his bed in the wee hours of April 18, 1906, when the Great Quake shook parts of the city to rubble. He hurriedly dressed and hitched a team of horses to a borrowed produce wagon and headed into town--to the Bank of Italy, which he had founded two years earlier. Sifting through the ruins, he discreetly loaded $2 million in gold, coins and securities onto the wagon bed, covered the bank's resources with a layer of vegetables and headed home...
...asked to join the board of the Columbus Savings & Loan Society, a modest bank in North Beach, the Italian section of town. Giannini soon found himself at odds with the other directors, who had little interest in extending loans to hardworking immigrants. In those days banks existed mainly to serve businessmen and the wealthy. Giannini tried to convince the board that it would be immensely profitable to lend to the working class, which he knew to be credit worthy...