Title:   The Kitchen Shrink: A Psychiatrist’s Reflections on Healing in a Changing World
Author:  Dora Calott Wang, M.D.
Publisher: The Penguin Group
ISBN:       978-1-59448-753-8

“Hey Doc, can you prescribe some meds for this condition of mine?” I mutter to myself as I pick up the pen to write this book review. It was due a month ago but the pressures of my schedule precluded my having met that deadline. The guilt is great and has been eating at me for weeks now. Of course I shouldn’t feel this way as there is just too much to squeeze into my daily 18-hour schedule. Alas, as I read on, I realize that it’s just a mild case of depression brought about as a result of my hectic rush. In fact, as I finish reading, I gather that the anxiety will soon pass. “Thanks Doc”, I murmur as I begin to write.

Title:   The Social Trade Show
Author:  Traci Browne
Publisher: Que Publishing
ISBN:       978-0-7897-4913-0

The Social Trade Show is all about how to turn a trade show into a social event using tools now available to the masses like Twitter and Facebook. There are some valid reasons to do this because, as the author explains, in doing so the show can be extended both on the front and back side and the selling is replaced by a social interaction that can eventually lead to greater sales.

Title:       Tea Party Revival, The Conscience of a Conservative Reborn
Author:    Dr. Leland Baker
Publisher: Outskirts Press
ISBN:       978-1432749170

Seldom will you find a book written as succinctly and logically as Tea Party Revival. You may disagree with the thesis, but it is hard to deny the logic that Dr. Leland Baker lays out in this straightforward discourse on American political philosophy. Dr. Baker’s premise is simple – read and respect the U.S. Constitution.

Title: Die $mart. Consumer Reference Guide To Death and Dying. What You Don’t Know… Or Don’t Do… Will Cost Your Family
Author: Kathleen Lane & Christine Hughes
ISBN: 978-0982123003
Publication Date: February 2009
Publisher: nFormed

Die $mart, tackles the question that all of us face at some point in time; how to leave the greatest amount of what you have worked for throughout your life to your loved ones when you leave this earth. Not the most pleasant thought but then, not everything about life need be pleasant. What is needed though is a plan, a plan as to how you can avoid given a large percentage of your net worth to the tax man and/or lawyers and administrative nightmares.

Title: Travel Happy, Budget Low – Over 200 Money Saving Tips to See the World (Paperback)
Author: Susan Zaraysky
Publisher: Kaleidomundi
ISBN: 978-0-9820189-8-9

Travel Happy, Budget Low, is a well organized and easily read book containing over 200 tips for making your travels both pleasurable and less costly. Susan includes numerous personal stories that are entertaining (including the fly-away passport) yet educational. Learning from others is certainly less painful than having to learn ourselves.

Book Review:

Philosophical enquiry almost always starts with a definition of the field being inquired about, and Right Relationship – Building a Whole Earth Economy, by Peter G. Brown and Geoffrey Garver, is no different. Brown and Garver tell us that the field of economics is too narrowly defined to serve a useful purpose for the inhabitants of the spaceship Earth. In fact, they set about to show that the marriage of economics with ecology is more sensible and is necessary if economics is to provide a guiding hand in the betterment for earth’s inhabitants. Note that these inhabitants are not just people, but animal and plant life as well.

Book Review:

Tick Tock, Stop the Clock, is a follow-up book to Lois Stern’s more introspective book, Sex, Lies and Cosmetic Surgery, pulling together 11 nationally recognized expert’s writings on how to improve ones look. The uniqueness of this book, as compared to the first, is that the emphasis is on non-invasive procedures that can change ones appearance as opposed to invasive procedures (such as a face lift).

Book Review:

In her new book, The Evolution Conspiracy, Lisa Shiel delivers a blistering indictment of not only evolutionary theory but of the scientific community that perpetrates what she labels a myth. Starting with the origin concepts of primordial soup and the big bang theory, Lisa delivers a chapter by chapter blow challenging all the loose ends that occupy the theories of evolution. "Are we to believe that each of us can trace our ancestry back to single-celled bacteria? Are we really related to flowers, grass, yeast, and the Ebola virus?" With questions like this, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the theory, it does give one reason to pause and question some of the basic spoon-fed assumptions most of us have.
 

Book Review:

Imagine a world with no humans. How would nature reclaim that which she had lost for thousands of years? How long would she take. What artifacts of human existence would last the longest. Alan Wesiman's sweeping account of this simple postulation in The World Without Us, and the adaptive nature of nature itself is a remarkable read - not only for the knowledge that it disseminates about the world around us as well as what we have done to it.

Book Review:

Personal accounts of heroic events are many times the stuff of books and movies and Lone Survivor, by Marcus Luttrell, is such an accounting. The ambush that he and his fellow soldiers encountered in the steep canyons of Afghanistan is a thrilling and action packed accounting that makes this book a good read. The camaraderie between the combatants is also the stuff of legends and Marcus's unending respect for his fellow soldiers and friends shines through in crystallized form.

Book Review:

Martine Enrenclou offers a practical, deliberate, and insightful guide for anyone faced with the heart wrenching prospect of having a loved one undergo hospitalization. In her book, Critical Conditions – The Essential Hospital Guide to Get Your Loved One Out Alive, Martine introduces you to the concept of patient advocacy and your place in that process. The step-by-step guide offers insight into the inner workings of the hospital care system with an emphasis on how you can become a critical part of that system if and when a member of your family requires treatment.

Book Review:

So many times the obvious contradictions that surround us go unnoticed. In our high-tech society, one such contradiction is the apparent acceptance by the general public in the increasingly pervasive use of electronic surveillance to examine their every action. Author Ross Clark, in his book The Road To Big Brother - One Man's Struggle Against the Surveillance Society, ponders this willingness of the public to be spied upon and concludes that so few apparently are aware of just how extensive the data collection is. As a result, Clark ends up taking us on a journey in a somewhat sarcastic manner to observe such spying. From the talking lamp post to the inability to move around Britain via automobile without having your picture taken, Big Brother is everywhere. But who's really watching and what happens to all that collected data? The real contradiction ends up being the rather uselessness of the surveillance exercise itself.