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Friday, May 13, 2011

Great new titles for improved well-being

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki

From the Publisher

Enchantment, as defined by bestselling business guru Guy Kawasaki, is not about manipulating people. It transforms situations and relationships. It converts hostility into civility and civility into affinity. It changes the skeptics and cynics into the believers and the undecided into the loyal. Enchantment can happen during a retail transaction, a high-level corporate negotiation, or a Facebook update. And when done right, it's more powerful than traditional persuasion, influence, or marketing techniques.

Kawasaki argues that in business and personal interactions, your goal is not merely to get what you want but to bring about a voluntary, enduring, and delightful change in other people. By enlisting their own goals and desires, by being likable and trustworthy, and by framing a cause that others can embrace, you can change hearts, minds, and actions. For instance, enchantment is what enabled . . .

• A Peace Corps volunteer to finesse a potentially violent confrontation with armed guerrillas.
• A small cable channel (E!) to win the TV broadcast rights to radio superstar Howard Stern.??
• A seemingly crazy new running shoe (Vibram Five Fingers) to methodically build a passionate customer base.??
• A Canadian crystal maker (Nova Scotian Crystal) to turn observers into buyers.
This book explains all the tactics you need to prepare and launch an enchantment campaign; to get the most from both push and pull technologies; and to enchant your customers, your employees, and even your boss. It shows how enchantment can turn difficult decisions your way, at times when intangibles mean more than hard facts. It will help you overcome other people's entrenched habits and defy the not-always-wise "wisdom of the crowd."

Kawasaki's lessons are drawn from his tenure at one of the most enchanting organizations of all time, Apple, as well as his decades of experience as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. There are few people in the world more qualified to teach you how to enchant people.

As Kawasaki writes, "Want to change the world? Change caterpillars into butterflies? This takes more than run-of-the-mill relationships. You need to convince people to dream the same dream that you do." That's a big goal, but one that's possible for all of us.





Fortytude: Making the Next Decades the Best Years of Your Life -- through the 40s, 50s, and Beyond by Sarah Brokaw

Kirkus Reviews

User-friendly guide for women who have entered that dreaded midlife decade and need reassurance about dealing with it.

With the assistance of Fox (co-author: Sexual Fitness, 2000), California-based therapist Brokaw proposes that embracing five core values—grace, connectedness, accomplishment, adventure and spirituality—gives women the strength (the "fortytude") they need to succeed at this stage of life. To reach this conclusion, she interviewed a wide variety of women across the United States, ranging in age from late 30s to early 50s. After an upbeat introduction in which the author urges women to think of life's challenges not as problems but as "sparkling moments," she explains what is meant by each of the five core values and introduces women who personify them. To demonstrate grace, she talks about women accepting their less-than-perfect appearance and aging gracefully. The section on connectedness explores women's friendships with other women and with intimate partners, mentoring relationships with younger women and one's relationship with oneself; accomplishment includes single mothers and stay-at-home mothers as well as career women. In discussing adventure, Brokaw discusses women who have reinvigorated their sex lives, changed careers and found new partners, but she also counsels that small changes, such as trying a new recipe or listening to different music, can bring adventure into a life that has become dulled by routine. The author is less successful in her discussion of spirituality, which boils down to some sort of vague inner peace. The text has a homey tone, and the author personalizes her message with stories from her own life and that of family members. As an aid to readers, she includes checklists and exercises that she has used in her therapy practice.

This innocuous, easy-to-read addition to the self-help literature for women comes with the advantage of the author's famous surname—she is the daughter of newscaster Tom Brokaw—which may give readers an extra measure of confidence in her advice.



Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer

Kirkus Reviews

In his first book, freelance journalist Foer recounts his adventures in preparing for the U.S. Memory Championship, investigating both the nature of memory and why the act of memorization still matters.

For much of human history, remembering was the key to retaining accumulated knowledge and wisdom. The invention of printing sparked the development of "externalized memory," which has been greatly accelerated by computers and the Internet. We need no longer remember everything, but rather know where to find it, relegating memory experts to a "quirky subculture" comprised of individuals able to remember a list of 1,000 numbers, the exact order of two decks of playing cards and other feats. Foer began to investigate this subculture and then joined it as he trained for a year to compete among other "mental athletes." Mental athletes are neither geniuses nor savants, but they have mastered the art of translating what the brain is not good at remembering—words and numbers—into what it is good at remembering—space and images. They employ the 2,500-year-old mnemonic device of constructing "memory palaces"—imaginary buildings with distinct images throughout these spaces. For example, an image of President Clinton smoking a cigar on the couch might be the number three. It becomes, of course, quite complex, but Foer emphasizes that memorization is neither a gift nor a trick; it is hard work developing "a degree of attention and mindfulness normally lacking." The author is as concerned with what memory means as he is with learning how to memorize. He offers fascinating and accessible explorations into the workings of the brain and tells the story of a man who could forget nothing and of another man who could only remember his most immediate thought. If "experience is the sum of our memories and wisdom the sum of experience," writes the author, what does it mean that "we've supplanted our own natural memory with a vast superstructure of technological crutches"?

An original, entertaining exploration about how and why we remember.

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