Spring brings the return of HOPE and renewed activity because of it. Consumers will be looking to take action toward reclaiming their lives and taking back their power. Display how-to’s of all kinds within easy reach. Shift comfort reads to the higher shelves until summer. Let your customers know that a sense of self-confidence lies between the covers of the tomes you have selected to showcase. Steer clear of anything that reeks of “me-first”, however. “For the good of all” is the cry now.
Turbo Metabolism: 8 Weeks to a New You: Preventing and Reversing Diabetes, Obesity, Heart Disease, and Other Metabolic Diseases by Treating the Causes
Pankaj Vij, MD (ISBN 978-1-60-868498-4) New World Library
www.newworldlibrary.com
Anyone who has watched PBS during fundraising times knows that nutrient-based diets and healthy lifestyle changes are trending seriously now. We’ve been overwhelmed with information, on TV, on the Internet, and even in newspapers. It takes a lot for a book to break through all of it and become a standout but that’s exactly what Turbo Metabolism is positioned to do. Pankaj Vij is a doctor, board certified in internal medicine and obesity medicine. He has a history of helping his patients to lose weight and manage chronic health conditions. He is a true believer who practices what he is preaching. He is a holistic practitioner, subscribing to the necessity to balance mind, body, and spirit in any health care regimen. He is also a realist. He gives readers permission to adapt the information in his book to suit their personal routines. He does, however, make it clear that continuing on with addictive, processed-food diets and unhealthy lifestyles will lessen both the quality and length of one’s life. It’s not negotiable. Joel Furman, current PBS healthy-food superstar wrote the foreword, encouraging readers to “stop the insanity”. The book includes menus and recipes and extensive notes documenting the sources for the information Dr. Vij is so competently presenting. Let your customers know that this is a manual for making major diet and lifestyle changes in the least disruptive manner possible.
The One Percent Edge: Small Changes That Guarantee Relevance and Build Sustainable Success by Susan Solovic with Ray Manley
(ISBN 978-0-81-443881-7) AMACON
www.amacombooks.org
Innovators ask better questions. That’s just one of the wisdom nuggets that Susan Solovic offers to readers. She begins the book by explaining why 29% of the original Fortune 500 companies have disappeared. As the pace of change continues to speed up, failures by previously stalwart businesses is increasing as well. The old strategies for maintaining success no longer work. Solovic tells us to forget business plans and building on past successes. Instead, company leaders not only need to predict the future, they need to be ready to change on a dime. Impossible? Solovic says the secret is making constant, incremental changes. In a highly energetic writing style, she shows readers how to apply the concept to every aspect of their business. She makes it sound almost fun. Think Steve Jobs as you read it.
How Children Thrive: The Practical Science of Raising Independent, Resilient, and Happy Kids
Mark Bertin, MD (ISBN 978-1-68-364020-2) Sounds True
www.soundstrue.com
“Years ago, a New Yorker cartoon showed two young children in a thoroughly trashed kitchen. There’s a rake, a saw and a gardenhose … The caption reads, and that’s how you make a peanut butter sandwich.” This paragraph, on page 12, tells you everything you need to know about Mark Bertin — he’s been there. His agenda is not to add yet another hoop for parents to jump through. Instead he wants to help parents to see the big picture of developmental growth that will put all the day-to-day decisions in context, removing much of the stress, and offering solutions that can be adapted to your customers’ personal situation and experience. He’s telling readers about executive function and letting them know that it isn’t fully developed until somewhere about age thirty. Until then, parents need to continue “mentoring” their children, adapting positive reinforcement and limits to suit their children’s individual progress and path to developmental maturity. This is must-read for every parent who cares.
Micro Mastery: Learn Small, Learn Fast, and Unlock Your Potential to Achieve Anything
Robert Twigger (ISBN 978-0-14-313232-5) TarcherPerigee
www.penguinrandomhouse.com
Combining neuroscience and the emerging field of positive psychology, Robert Twigger has put into practice (and into words) what most of your customers will discover they knew all along. Learning is not best accomplished in a linear, boring, step-by-step manner. Learning is meant to be dynamic, exciting, and easy to engage with. If you want to learn to cook, don’t start at the beginning of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and work your way through the book one page at a time. (Although that has been a successful strategy for a handful of people.) Pick a food you love to eat and learn to cook just that one food by researching, asking chefs, and cooking just that one food until you get it right. You will probably expend much more effort in experimenting than you would have following step-by-step instructions, but the end result will be that you learned how to cook, you proved to yourself that could do it, and now you can extend that model to anything else you want to learn. Social media has changed the world. We are all processing information must faster than we ever believed was possible. A new model of communicating is emerging before our e-Eyes. Twigger is at the forefront of the movement to apply the resulting skills to the art and science of learning. Lots of scientists are talking about it. Twigger has put it into words that the general public can understand and apply to their own lives.
Crystal Gridwork: The Power of Crystals and Sacred Geometry to Heal, Protect and Inspire
Kiera Fogg (ISBN 978-1-57-863642-6) Weiser Books
www.redwheelweiser.com
New definitions of spirituality are creating markets for personal sacred space. At the high-end, there are crystal-encrusted rooms with melodic waterfalls. For most of us, for most of your customers, it translates into special candles, incense burners, and windowsill plants with crystals in them. Many of you sell small figurines and other specialty items for home altars. If Instagram is any measure, the latest outgrowth of this trend is the increased popularity of crystal grids. Healing practitioner Fogg specializes in combining crystals with other elements in energetic patterns that heal, commemorate, and energize goals. Now, beautiful, powerful photography puts her spiritual artistry front and center in a book that shares her secrets with readers. From the Restful Sleep Circle to the Forgiveness Cross, these 30 highly-charged grids offer your customers a beautiful way to anchor energy in their lives.
Milk Street: The New Home Cooking
Christopher Kimball (ISBN 978-0-31-643728-8) Little, Brown and Company
www.littlebrown.com
Chris Kimball is the epitome of a business leader applying The One Percent Edge (reviewed above). America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Country made him one of the most famous TV cooking instructors ever, and Cook’s Illustrated became the bible for high-end home cooking. When he saw a sea change headed towards cooking businesses, he suggested making changes to what appeared to be a fail-proof formula. He hit a wall and walked away from success to found a new business, Milk Street, where he could make the changes he wanted to make. As established TV scrambled to ride the global wave of interest in “ethnic” food, Kimball found the niche he was looking for. It wasn’t “ethnic” food; it was breakfast, lunch, and dinner in other countries. Think about it. It’s the difference between just another cooking show with strange ingredients and a cooking show that has you sitting on the edge of your seat. This, the first cookbook created in this new empire, documents his journey of discovery with both narrative and photos. He sought out simple recipes, easy to make, that were packed with flavor. He was determined to create recipes for the home cook that were new and exciting and manageable. The book is produced with Kimball’s trademark attention to detail: well-organized with complete, understandable instructions, and lots and lots of pretty photos (we are, after all, a social media world now). This will make a perfect housewarming gift, even for people who don’t cook — yet.
Carl Jung and Arnold Toynbee: The Social Meaning of Inner Work
J. Gary Sparks (ISBN 978-1-89-457447-8) Inner City Books
www.innercitybooks.net
A quick visit to any social media venue (the world of quotes attributed to famous people) will verify the continuing celebrity of Carl Jung and his world-changing insights. Historian Arnold Toynbee is quoted less often, but Sparks suggests that he was on a parallel path with Jung, as they both noted and put forward their theories that the human psyche is inextricably tied to external manifestation. The two never met but developed an admiration for each other’s work that brings enlightenment to each of their legacies. It is the basis of much of new consciousness thought. Sparks dissects this foundation intelligently and intelligibly with keen discernment and tremendous knowledge. For customers who subscribe to the idea that we all create our own reality, this is book that will explain to them how that idea came to be today’s common wisdom. It is a powerful discussion of symbolism, creativity, the search for meaning, spiritual values, the breakdown of societies, and transformation. It also pays witness to the role of synchronicity in the life of visionaries like Jung and Toynbee.
Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners
Naomi Shihab Nye (ISBN 978-4-80-531437-1) Greenwillow Books
www.harpercollins.com
With cleared-eyed lyricism, Nye has filled this book with nearly 100 poems that ask us to listen. In a world that is constantly bombarding us with sound, demanding our attention, listening is becoming a lost art. Voices in the Air makes us realize what we are losing. In Time’s Low Note (The wind never says/Call me back.), Cross the Sea (My infinity would be/the never-ending light/you deserve.), Reserved for Poets (We forget to make a reservation. But there’s room.), and I Vote for You (In your dreams no one is a refugee. /Everyone has clean sheets.) we can hear the voices that inspired her and we can ride the winds of time with her. Along the way, she introduces us to some of the people who have spoken to her, but she speaks, in the end, with her own voice as she reminds us of our common humanity.
The Wisdom of the Tao: Ancient Stories that Delight, Inform, and Inspire
Deng Ming-Dao (ISBN 978-0-15-7174837-9) Hampton Roads Publishing
www.redwheelweiser.com
In ancient China, storytellers were the CNN, Twitter, and Politico.com of their day. They traveled through the land, spreading their stories far and wide. The stories with the most human appeal stuck. Generations passed on important lessons through these tales. And thus, the TAO was born. Deng Ming-Dao continues this sacred tradition with more than 140 carefully-selected, finely-crafted, ancient stories that inform and instruct by delighting readers.
Origami Love Notes: Romantic Hand-Folded Notes & Envelopes
Florence Temko (ISBN 978-0-80-484808-4) Tuttle Publishing
www.tuttlepublishing.com
In a digitally perfect world, the human touch (artisanal) is becoming a highly-prized commodity. For centuries, Japanese people have used origami and letter folding to show respect and affection by combining craftsmanship, symbolism, and attention to detail. Tuttle has a long history of producing top quality, how-to origami books and kits. Origami Love Notes reaches new heights (and new audiences) by combining the traditional with creative freedom. Readers are encouraged to add their own touches, i.e., bits of lace, stickers, hearts, flowers, stars, etc. Some of the projects, like Seal It with a Heart are easily mastered (and elaborated on) in minutes. Others, like Folded Money Heart require a bit of experience and skill. Once learned, this special technique can be used to enhance gifts, thank you cards, or any special communication. The boxed kit includes 36 origami paper sheets in addition to the full-color instruction book. It’s a perfect antidote for an increasingly detached world.
Author: Anna Jedrziewski
Anna Jedrziewski is a consciousness author and consultant, as well as founder and director of Spirit Connection New York, Inc.
Website: http://spiritconnectionnewyork.org
