Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life: Achieving Optima Health and Wellness through Ayurveda, Chinese Medicine, and Western Science by Dr. Claudia Welch (Da Capo, $18)
Dr. Claudia Welch, who teaches both Asian and Syurvedic medicines, is convinced that achieving balance — both physically and mentally — is essential for living a more productive life. In achieving that necessary balance, the author outlines easy-to-follow strategies for self care to help women combat stress-induced medical problems ranging from painful periods, mood swings, fatigue, and insomnia, to infertility, uterine fibroids, hot flashes, heart disease, and osteoporosis.
Using Eastern insights blended with Western strategies, Welch offers holistic yet practical advice for achieving optimal health. She addresses such topics as how hormones interact and why it matters and reveals ways to avoid loss of bone density, ways to achieve lifelong breast health, and simple steps for smoothing later-life transitions. She also suggests nourishing and tasty foods to enhance energy and advantages and drawbacks of single-hormone therapies.
Bringing clarity to the complexities of body chemistry, this well-crafted book will help women discover the rewards and rejuvenation that come with a balanced life.

59 Seconds” Change Your Life in Under a Minute by Richard Wiseman (Anchor Books, $14.95)
Bestselling author and psychologist Richard Wiseman has crafted a no-nonsense plan filled with tips and tricks that can help improve almost every aspect of life. Whether it is finding a perfect partner, losing weight, or obtaining a dream job, Wiseman claims that it can all begin by closing your eyes and imagining a new you.
Wiseman, who is frustrated with much of the so-called self-help industry, brings together a remarkably diverse range of scientific data with new techniques that that can be effortlessly incorporated into everyday life. The result, he claims, is a life-changing transformation that can be achieved by investing just 59 seconds.

Loyalty: The Vexing Virtue by Eric Felten (Simon & Schuster, $25)
Eric Felten, author of the The Wall Street Journal’s popular culture column, “Postmodern Times,” claims that loyalty provides the bonds of love, family, friendship, community, country, and faith. He adds that loyalties and betrayals motivate us both publicly and privately, and draws on vivid examples from history, politics, literature, business, and everyday life that illustrate how the path of fidelity, despite its rewards, can be littered with moral land mines.
With wit and insight, Felten illustrates the push and pull of loyalties — from the ancient Greeks to Facebook — with stories and scenarios in which conflicting would-be trump cards trap the unlucky in painful ethical dilemmas. Even though loyalty can be one of our greatest satisfactions in life, it can also be the root of much misery.
As Felten points out, loyalty is a vexing virtue but despite its frustrations it is a worthy pursuit. “To be loyal is to be trustworthy,” Felten concludes, “To be loyal is to keep your word. It is the simplest, most fundamental stuff of life. What good is love without loyalty? Who can be said to have lived a flourishing life who hasn’t enjoyed the comforts of true friendship — which is to say loyal friendship? Who has faith without fidelity? Who can betray, or be betrayed, without being blighted. Who would walk the tightrope of life without the net of faithful friends and family.”
Felten laments that many view loyalty as a forgotten relic and claims that there has never been a better time to dust it off and give it a try.

Do More Than Give: The Six Practices of Donors Who Change the World by Leslie R. Crutchfield, John V. Kania, and Mark R. Kramer (Jossey-Bass, $29.95)
It is interesting to note that of the more than 75,000 foundations that exist in the U.S., nearly half were created in the last two decades. Private foundations account for approximately $30 billion of the $300 billion annual giving in America and, as the baby boomers age, it is predicted that they will pass down more than $40 trillion, of which $6 trillion could go to nonprofits. What’s missing in this rosy picture, according to the authors, is that philanthropy is still underperforming relative to its potential. Crutchfield, Kania, and Kramer, internationally-acclaimed experts, present a roadmap for more innovative approaches to high-impact philanthropy in their new book.
“Do More Than Give” profiles more than two dozen catalytic donors who are at the helm of the new wave of philanthropy. From the world’s largest private foundations to corporate foundations, the philanthropy is changing in America, due in no small part to a small yet growing breed of ambitious catalytic donors who are breaking the mold. When donors play a catalytic role, they leverage their philanthropic resources to the highest extent possible, enabling even small donors to have more impact that some billionaires who rank above them in sheer giving.

The Mommy Docs’ Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy and Birth by Drs. Yvonne Bohn, Allison Hill, and Alane Park with Melissa Jo Peltier (Da Capo, $15.95)
What could be better than a guide to pregnancy and birth written by doctors who are also moms?
Having a baby can be an exciting time in a woman’s life but it can also be stressful because of a lack of reliable information. Drs. Bohn, Hill, and Park, combine their forty-five years of experience as well as their personal experiences as mothers in their comprehensive new book. From before conception to after delivery, this guide addresses what woman can anticipate during each trimester, baby’s bith, and the first days at home. Old myths are also discredited. For example, cocoa butter doesn’t prevent stretch marks, there is no danger flying on an airplane while pregnant, and walking does not make you go through labor faster.
The doctors, all board-certified OB/GYNs who have been in private practice in Los Angeles for more than a decade, have delivered more than 10,000 babies. Their book is written in a clear and friendly style. Packed with real-life stories from new moms and tested practical tips, this extraordinary guide is a reassuring resource for a healthy and stress-free pregnancy.

How to Listen to Great Music: A Guide to Its History, Culture, and Heart by Robert Greenberg (Plume, $16)
Based on The Teaching Company’s bestselling music course, “How to Listen to Great Music” helps readers finally hear what they’ve been missing.
Greenberg, the music historian-in-residence with San Francisco Performances and frequent contributor to NPR’s weekend edition of “All Things Considered,” has written a concise guide that is certain to appeal to novice listeners and longtime classical music buffs alike. Greenberg’s book focuses mainly on Western concert music composed between 1600 and 1900, covering everything from Beethoven and Bach to Wagner and Debussy. Each musical era is examined, including “Music Box” sections with representative musical examples for listening,
More than simply a music course, Greenberg serves up a unique perspective on history since music has always been a mirror reflecting the world’s religious, political, economic, and social events. In the process, Greenberg takes readers on a journey that will transform and enrich their listening experiences.

The Strawberry Letter by Shirley Strawberry with Lyah Beth LeFlore (Ballantine Books/New World, $22)
Shirley Strawberry, co-host of the #1 urban radio morning show, “The Steve Harvey Show” which is heard in some 60 markets, shares her no-nonsense woman-to-woman straight talk in her new book. She tells it like it is as she reveals such things as the highs and lows of dating, marriage, and breakups, the challenges of being a great mom, ways to get (and give) the support you need to stay sane, and even tips for overcoming low self-esteem and depression. According to Strawberry, finding balance, faith, and acceptance is part of the process.
Strawberry claims that she hopes her book will encourage readers to make better choices and decisions in relationships, whether they be with the family, a lover, or in the workplace. She emphasizes that the secret is to be motivated, healed, reinvigorated, and challenged not to just love but to begin my loving yourself.

The Gifted Boss: How to Find, Crate and Keep Great Employees by Dale Dauten (William Morrow, $20)
In this revived edition, Dale Dauten, founder of The Innovators’ Lab, a business consulting group, is convinced every boss wants good employees, namely workers who don’t need to be managed and who make everyone around them work harder and raise the department’s standards. One of the secrets, Dauten claims, is freedom from management mediocrity, and morons. By following his sane advice, Bosses may discover that by learning certain steps they can have make their workplaces the best place for people to work.

The Language of Trust: Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics by Michael Maslansky with Scott West, Gary DeMoss, and David Saylor (Prentice Hall Press Trade Paperback, $16)
Regardless of whether your’re trying to sell a product, service, or idea, it can be difficult since we live in an era of skeptical consumers who listen less and question more. What you say and how you say can help put across an idea or product even to a public that doesn’t want to hear it.
Based on pioneering research, “The Language of Trust” shows how to regain the confidence of your clients and customers by learning to communicate with them on their terms. What words to use, what words to lose, and how to structure your message to overcome skepticism and build and keep the trust of an audience is examined. Readers will also learn the four principles of credible communication (be personal, he plainspoken, be positive, and be plausible), as well as the dirty dozen of the worst words and phrases to use including “guarantee,” “free,” “implement,” and “it is.”

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