Useful tools for living a more balanced life.
An easy approach to integrating different realms of your life and achieving a healthy lifestyle.
It was a wake-up call when doctors told Colman that she had an 87 percent chance of receiving a breast cancer diagnosis in her lifetime. With a sister already in the midst of her own grueling battle with the disease, Colman had a choice: accept that a cancer diagnosis was nearly inevitable or “create a new health destiny” for herself. She chose the latter, stepping off the corporate fast track to earn a master’s degree in holistic health education and remake her life. Colman rejects the idea that healthy living simply means eating well or getting enough exercise, instead choosing to see health as “a state that emerges from four areas—four quadrants—Mind, Body, Relationships, and Environment.” By taking positive actions in each of these four areas, Colman says, the reader can improve his or her health, reduce the risk of serious disease and live a better life. The book’s four sections discuss each quadrant in detail, offering straightforward solutions for improving health, many of which can be implemented right away. This small-step approach to improving life is notably appealing, since it’s easy enough to follow suggestions such as striving to find humor in stressful situations or switching to nontoxic household cleaners. Other recommendations are more intensive and won’t be as easy to put into action as Colman sometimes makes them sound. For instance, getting out of toxic relationships by “exiting stage left” may be a real challenge for some, and Colman offers few tips on how to break free from such unhealthy bonds. Some of the advice is so brief that it seems like filler, including a chapter on rethinking one’s attitude toward weeds, which features vague tips on avoiding pesticides and embracing native plants. Nonetheless, Colman packs plenty of sensible suggestions into this slim book. What might come off as judgmental in less-deft hands is here more like gentle advice from a close friend.
Useful tools for living a more balanced life.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-939288-22-6
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Four Quadrant Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Full of interesting factoids–-but the blatant advertising for Kushner's products is pervasive to the point the book becomes...
A wake-up call about caffeine from a committed and self-interested author.
Formerly a newspaper journalist in Russia who consumed enormous amounts of coffee and cigarettes, Kushner relocated to New York City during the early '90s. Shortly thereafter, she learned she suffered from Celiac disease, a genetic disorder that was perhaps exacerbated by products containing caffeine. She researched caffeine substitutes, none of them suiting her tastes. And she discovered that certain substitutes contain gluten, another substance that those with Celiac cannot tolerate. Thus, she "invented" soy coffee and uses this book as her marketing platform. It's frequently informative, though, once the the text moves beyond pure publicity. For instance, she mentions that England's King Charles II attempted to shutter coffeehouses in 1675 because men tended to neglect their families while staying out to consume caffeine. Widespread protest, though, defeated the ban; the Boston Tea Party of 1773 resulted in the consumption of coffee as a patriotic duty; the world's first espresso machine began making noise in France in 1882; Maxwell House coffee is named after a Nashville hotel; US coffee sales boomed during the 1920s thanks to Prohibition; the US imported 70 percent of the world’s coffee crop at the beginning of WWII; Starbucks opened its first store in Seattle in 1971. These are just a few pieces of coffee trivia the author offers. She also briefly discusses the history of the American addiction to caffeine, explaining the chemistry of the substance, listing specific health threats (heart disease, central-nervous-system disorders, ulcers, cancer) and mapping out specific routes to end dependency. Unfortunately, though, the style interferes with the substance, as the tone is often shrill and alarmist. An appendix titled "Make a Difference!" is the call to action here, urging readers to petition the FDA for fuller disclosure among coffee manufacturers of specific product caffeine levels.
Full of interesting factoids–-but the blatant advertising for Kushner's products is pervasive to the point the book becomes soporific.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-9747582-0-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An adequate guide for running high-performance workgroups within a corporate setting, but far from a guaranteed formula for...
A satisfactory business study confirming the old business saw that 10% of the people do 90% of the work.
According to Annunzio's analysis, only 10% of elite information workers work in high performance-workgroups. The remaining 90%? Apparently they labor away as modern-day Bob Cratchits, in environments that neither demand nor deliver optimal performance. Ebullient accounts of the ideal workplace are nothing new in business nonfiction, nor are the lugubrious tales of moribund organizations. The author rarely notes here, though, anything we haven't heard a million times before from Tom Peters, Steven Covey, or even Donald Trump. Her maxims are boilerplate business clichés: value people; optimize critical thinking; seize opportunities. But basing a formula for business success on such bland principles is problematic, since they are so vague as to be meaningless. Do companies fail because they neglect to do such things? Most failures had nothing to do with workgroup functioning; instead, they stemmed from lack of foresight and, more commonly, simple bad luck. Nonetheless, Annunzio does proffer good advice for companies that wish to maximize the performance of their workgroups. First, identify those that are performing at a high level, those that can provide evidence of profit/revenue growth along with product, service, or process innovation. Second, work on bringing average groups up to maximum performance. More importantly, avoid destructive behaviors such as micromanagement, bureaucratic interference, resource and information hoarding, politics, and control. She also makes the astute—and cost-saving—observation that before hiring high-priced consultants to solve business problems, companies might consider consulting their own employees, who are more likely to know the answers.
An adequate guide for running high-performance workgroups within a corporate setting, but far from a guaranteed formula for business success.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2004
ISBN: 0-59184-060-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
