The 17 Day Plan to Stop Aging by Dr. Mike Moreno (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, $26)
Dr. Mike Moreno, author of “The 17 Day Diet” and a San Diego-based physician, follows the phenomenon success of his previous book with one that introduces a 4-cycle plan he claims can help readers look younger and feel healthier in just 17 days.
According to Dr. Moreno, there are five factors that trigger and accelerate aging: inflammation, oxidative stress, glycation, methylation, and immune impairment. He explains what each of these factors is, how they age us, and what we can do to halt the damage they’ve caused while preventing further harm. His 4-cycle plan focuses on nine vital bodily systems, namely the lungs, heart, brain, immune, digestive, hormones, musculoskeletal, reproductive, and urinary. Each cycle has a 17 day plan that includes physical and cognitive exercises that can be done anywhere, along with nutritional recommendations and tools to help measure success.
Dr. Moreno explains that every second that you are alive, you are getting older and adds that the body often undergoes related changes that too often lead to less energy, painful joints, droopy skin, facial wrinkles, graying or thinning hair, and overall declining health. He believes his plan will help people not to just live longer but feel younger.

The Wealth Cure: Putting Money in Its Place by Hill Harper (Gotham Books, $16)
Hill Harper’s wakeup call came in his doctor’s office where he received a thyroid cancer diagnosis. Nothing gets your attention quite like cancer and Harper quickly realized that his personal wealth and success were no longer all that important. He decided to clear his head so he could come to terms with his illness and, perhaps, win the toughest fight of his life.
In his book, Harper presents a new definition of wealth as he motivates readers to not just build financial security but also achieve wealth in other areas of their lives. It begins with what he calls an attitudinal change. Drawing on personal recollections and true stories from his family and friends, Harper has written in inspiring, insightful guide to reevaluating life and the things that matter.
Harper, actor and author, is also philanthropist who started the Manifest Your Destiny Foundation to empower, encourage and inspire youth through mentorship, scholarship, and grant programs.

How to Find Out Anything: From Extreme Google Searches to Scouring Government Documents, a Guide to Uncovering Anything About Everyone and Everything by Don MacLeod (Prentice Hall Press, $20)
By using the techniques revealed in this book, readers can find out such tidbits as the amount your neighbor paid for his house, what happened to your old high school crush, how much your boss makes, and what has been posted on the Internet about you and the people you know.
MacLeod, a law librarian at prestigious law films in New York City for more than 20 years, teaches readers how to, first, craft the perfect answerable question by thinking like a detective, assuming nothing, and staying organized. Throughout his book, he reveals how to navigate a library, steps to get the most out of Google so you can find the answers to all of the questions you have always wanted to know but have been too afraid to ask.

Hidden Treasure: Uncovering the Truth in Your Life Story by Gangaji (Teacher/Penguin, $15.95)
In this book, the author challenges readers to ask themselves a crucial question: Who am I? In determining the answer, she claims we are often blocked by cynicism, denial, and refusal that prevents us from finding “the hidden treasure that the quiet mind reveals.”
Her directives for those seeking contentment in their lives are fairly basic and include being still, learning from a story but not retelling it over and over again, curtailing suffering by admitting that our own minds often become the abusive agent, and stop asking why. As she points out, the question focuses on the problem, not the solution, and that if we are sober in our recognition of endings, our stories can be viewed as reflections of our particular love affairs with life. She adds that that isn’t always smooth and easy but worth it all the while.
Gangaji (Antoinette Varner), teacher and author, lives with her husband in Oregon between spiritual retreats.

True Strength: My Journey from Hercules to Mere Mortal – and How Nearly Dying Saved by Life by Kevin Sorbo (Da Capo, $16)
One morning while doing bicep curls, actor Kevin Sorbo felt a hot searing pain shoot down his left arm. Even though intense workouts were part of his regular routine, he immediately put down the weights and quickly left the gym. That probably saved his life. Later, when he was rushed to the hospital he discovered he had had an aneurysm, one that had almost completely disrupted the flow of blood to his left arm. In a frantic attempt to save the arm, doctors thinned his blood, making him a “drug-induced hemophiliac.” Sorbo and his medical team then fought to save his life.
Sorbo, the Los Angeles-based actor and star of such legendary roles as “Hercules,” knew that to recover he had to rethink his life and find a path back to good health through persistence and transformation in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
This compelling memoir is a personal account documenting Sorbo’s health crisis, his brush with death, and the effects of long-term debilitation.

Predictive Health: How We Can Reinvent Medicine to Extend Our Best Years by Kenneth Brigham, M.D., and Michael M.E. Johns, M.D. (Basic Books, $26.99)
Health care is one of the most monumental problems facing our country. How we care for the sick is one of our most perplexing national debates. While most doctors seem to treat death as an enemy to be conquered, Dr. Brigham and Dr. Johns propose a different approach that is simple as it is revolutionary by suggesting that a patient’s health, not the disease, be treated. Instead of squandering valuable resources on futile solutions, long-term measures to improve heath and increase life expectancy should be explored.
Dr. Brigham, a professor of medicine at Emory University, and Dr. Johns, chancellor and former executive vice president for health affairs at Emory, use case studied and examples of actual patients and doctors to reveal an eye-opening look at the pitfalls of the current American system, especially as it compares with those of other industrial nations.
This is an important book. It reflects on such basic things as an acceptance of mortality and the concept of a “good death.” A good death which is the way most people would prefer to die with an ultimate goal of aging with grace for as long as possible, die, quickly, of natural causes, with dignity.