The Business of Happiness – Ted Leonsis (Regnery)

Ted Leonsis is one happy guy. Perhaps you would be too if you had sold your first company for a cool $60 million before you even turned thirty.

Leonsis, a former internet kingpin (AOL) and a sports team owner in Washington D.C. has good reason to be happy with his success in business, but to hear Leonsis tell it, happiness is no accident. According to his book, “The Business of Happiness,” you too can achieve an increased level of happiness just by applying several of the principals outlined in the book. To achieve improved happiness, Leonsis recommends things like keeping a list of life-long goals (a list he made after a life-changing near fatal airplane incident), give back to those more needy and activate the communities that you are a natural constituent for.

The book is divided into two halves; the first is a sort of mini-biography of Ted’s years as a tech entrepreneur leading into combining his fledgling company with Steve Case’s early AOL, the famed (and some say ill-fated) merger between AOL and TimeWarner, and finally life after the internet with the purchase of a series of sports teams that again emphasize the principals of teamwork, pride and community.

The second half of the book is where Leonsis outlines his six principles of happiness and how each one has pushed him further up the happiness chain. While Leonsis’ recantation is filled with an upbeat attitude, it’s hard not to imagine some obstacles along the way. But for all his optimism, Leonsis recommendations are concrete examples of just what can be achieved with a change in attitude as well as keeping a steady eye on the goal tiller. “The Business of Happiness” is filled with ideas for improving both one’s outlook and results. Leonsis’ own story is the prove of the pudding.

Read more about Ted Leonsis at Ted’s Blog here.

Video: Publish Your Nonfiction Book

Here at Blog on Books we experience a steady stream of first time, independent authors that ask for assistance on how to best get their book ideas in front of those who can get their books published. In order to demystify the process, Seattle based literary agent Sharlene Martin and non-fiction writer Anthony Flacco have assembled a primer for newbie writers looking to find an audience. Topics like writing the standout query letter, assembling the elements of a book proposal, building a credible background as an ‘authority,’ obtaining the necessary rights as well as examples of pitches that worked and, well, those that didn’t.

Given Martin’s position on the receiving end along with Flacco’s experience with the process from the writer’s side, “Publish Your Non-Fiction Book” (F&W Media) is not only an informed and useful guide, but one that shines a light into a process that can easily elude those who have not yet approached the often mystical process.

Home Makeovers That Sell – Sid Davis (Amacom) Home Staging That Works – Starr Osborne (Amacom)

With the downturn in the real estate market not too mention the lower values of existing homes due to the record number of foreclosures on the market, homeowners who are trying to sell their homes will need every possible advantage to move their properties at a good price. Fortunately, two new books from Amacom may be able to help.

Before putting your home on the market, you might be well advised to pick up a copy of ‘Home Makeovers That Sell.’ In it, Sid Davis explains in a methodical manner, the necessary steps – many of which a broker may not even tell you – to prepare your house to get the best possible price even in a difficult market. Davis explains how packaging makes a huge difference, both in prepping your home as well as assembling the marketing plan for that house.

The book provides a room by room checklist of repairs (from simple de-cluttering to landscaping to upgrades and repairs) that will payback their costs in a greater sales price and/or a quicker sale. While much of Davis’ focus is on cosmetic items, his overall point is that the best approach to selling your house, is to think like a buyer, see what the buyer sees and take care to make it look as good as possible. In addition to a room-by-room assessment, Davis provides a series of checklists to guide your progress as well as a chapter covering difficult situations including dealing with lenders and even how to stave off the possibility of the worst case scenario, foreclosure.

In a similar mode comes “Home Staging That Works” by Starr Osborne. In it, the author focuses on appearances and how to strip back your personal possessions (one section is actually called “Taking the ‘You’ Out of Your House”) and once your house is pared to the bone, how to bring in clutter-free accoutrements that will add sizzle to any house to prepare for a successful sale.

Many of Osborne’s recommendations may seem extreme to the novice home seller – especially those who have lived in their home for a long time – but the book highlights a series of step-by-step methods to actually help get the owner through the process involved of giving your house the necessary facelift to create a fast sale. Packing, storing, labeling and knowing what to hide and what to keep are the linchpins of Osborne’s approach. An ample number of black and white photos help explain the extent of the approach that the author recommends.

Whether you take all of the author’s suggestions or not, at least ‘Home Staging That Works’ serves as a complete program to maximize the decorative makeover designed to get you the most for your house in a still difficult market. Of course, actually doing the work is still up to you.

Mojo – Marshall Goldsmith (Hyperion)

Marshall Goldsmith pulls no punches. He wants to help you get back on track – get your ‘mojo’ back as he puts it, but he wont tolerate self-delusion along the way. This much is clear in “Mojo: How to Get it, How to Keep It, How to Get it Back if You Lose It.”

Goldsmith, (author of last year’s bestseller, “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There”) lays out a prescription for identifying what makes you tick, how you are different and what you have to offer, and then how to shape and maximize those skills to cut through life like a proverbial hot butter knife. In this short (200 pages), but powerful book, Dr. Goldsmith (who as an executive coach, advises top Fortune 500 companies regularly) quickly identifies habits and traits that hold people back (the ‘Nojo’) and how to quickly subvert them and get back on the path to success.

This easy read is anchored by a writing style that makes its points clearly through a number of streamlined examples that most readers should have no problem understanding. The linchpins of Goldsmith’s focus are identity, achievement, reputation and acceptance and the concepts are reinforced by dedicated chapters, questionaries, graphics and work sheets that far from belaboring the point, rather serve to explain and reinforce the overriding concept; are you receiving short-term gain and maximizing your long term goals through your actions, both large and small. This is the essence of the book.

It’s easy to see why Goldsmith is a best-seller in the field. His books are on target and get to the root of the matter – albeit sometimes counter-intuitively – using both the broad and specific strokes required for the reader to get back on track. His laser focus on what works vs. what we think will work is exactly what makes his work stand out in a crowded field.

For more try: Marshall Goldsmith’s website

For Better – Tara Parker-Pope (Dutton)

Everyone knows there is no shortage of ‘relationship’ books on the market today. Books about dating, mating and separating have lined bookshelves for years.

So it comes with some surprise that someone has come up with a fresh approach to this age-old topic; an approach primarily based on science. Not just science in a cold, clinical, Masters and Johnson style, but a science that takes into account things like socialization, health patterns, communication skills and lifestyle issues.

In, ‘For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage,’ author and New York Times’ ‘Well blog’ columnist Tara Parker-Pope explores a wide variety of factors that determine success (or failure) for today’s married couples. Everything from the initial meeting to body language (including the killer rolled eyeballs), frequency of sex, and married vs. single vs. divorced health patterns for both men and women is fair game here. From hormonal studies to extra-marital affairs, the concepts are explained with the kind of backing that goes beyond the opinion style of similar books to a well vetted set of facts (many of which are counter-intuitive) to support each revealing position. Meaning… we’re talking research.

Parker-Pope brings together an impressive array of studies and statistics – from lab experiments on mice and chimps, to census data trends to a wide swath of studies (Berkeley, NYU, Vanderbilt, Mayo Clinic, etc.) to create her models of the new married class. Dozens upon dozens of studies are translated in a well organized fashion to examine the factors that create lasting marital love; the nitty-gritty of why some relations work, others don’t and what can really be done to improve a couple’s chances of overall success. (The good news here, is that things aren’t as bad as we’ve been led to believe.) Throughout, Parker-Pope presents the findings in a fluid yet condensed (i.e. no filler) writing style that is neither dry nor difficult to absorb, which, in the final analysis, is precisely what sets ‘For Better’ apart from many others on the subject.

Say It Like Obama – Shel Leanne (McGraw Hill)

In the wake of President Obama’s first televised address from the oval office, (using this initial opportunity to address the BP oil spill situation in the gulf) we thought it would be interesting to take a look at a book that profiles the skills that the former Senator from Illinois employs to convey his messages to the public.

‘Say It Like Obama’ examines the myriad techniques that Obama – who even his most vocal critics admit is one of the finest orators of the modern political era – uses to drive his agenda in ways most speakers have never approached. Author Shel Leanne deconstructs a variety of famous Obama speeches – beginning with his electrifying 2,800 word speech that introduced a magnetic new young player to the political arena at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in July of 2004, to Obama’s later, high-profile speeches in Berlin, his acceptance speech, the inauguration speech and others.

Along the way, Leanne distills the specific techniques that allowed Obama to maximize the effectiveness of the communication that created the meteoric rise of the 44th President of the United States. Among the techniques ‘Say It’ reveals are things like finding common ground, using words that resonate, addressing objections, the power of three, using polysyndeton and achieving transcendence. In identifying each technique, Leanne shows example after example of how these devices are used to create hyper-effective, and highly effective communication to an audience.

The purpose of the book, of course, is to show business leaders and anyone who aspires to public speaking, a panoply of approaches to effectively improve their mass-communication skills. By using uber-orator Obama as the example, the book cannot help but succeed. Or more simply put, ‘Fired up’ begins here.

76-Year-Old Man Releases Exercise Book

Author Calvin Hill has released his new book ‘Staying Fit After 60: Introducing the Exercise for Life Program’ to share the health and life-savings benefits of the program he has developed. He puts it bluntly: “This book is telling
seniors, you can get old without feeling old.”

Hill was 60 years old himself when he first began doing the exercises he details in his
book and he has since completed the program almost six thousand times. “I have
experienced personally the benefits of the physical and mental fitness it has added to the
quality of my life,” says Hill.

If anyone might wonder why Mr. Hill would wait until he was 76 years old to write a
book about exercise and fitness, Mr. Hill states “I had to have indisputable and irrefutable
proof as to the value and the beneficial results of this exercise program.” Mr. Hill states
“The purpose of this book is to introduce the health and life saving benefits one can get
using the Exercise For Life Program.”

The Program – Kelly Traver, M.D. (Atria) Change Your Brain, Change Your Body – Daniel Amen, M.D. (Harmony Books)

In recent years, a host of new publications have hit the consumer health sciences market, examining, not the methods by which to maintain a healthier lifestyle, but rather the sources and motivations that lie beneath those methods. Two such recent releases are ‘The Program’ by Kelly Traver, M.D. and ‘Change Your Brain, Change Your Body’ by famed neuroscientist, Dr. Daniel Amen.

Based on years of study of her patients in her Menlo Park, California clinic (and her MDHealth Evolution organization), Traver’s book, ‘The Program: The Brain-Smart Approach to the Healthiest You’ is a 12 week plan for insuring or reclaiming one’s optimal health through what can essentially be described as a behavioral re-wiring of the personal health game-plan emanating from the human brain. Beginning by describing twelve characteristics of the brain (the emotional brain, the rational brain, the adaptable brain, etc…) Traver assembles a self-reliant plan covering topics like mastering stress, maximizing energy, outsmarting heart disease, diminishing diabetes, curing sleep loss, preventing cancer as well as looking at how to age successfully. Throughout her program, Traver’s directives and style are both warm and understandable while allowing the reader to track their progress through easy to monitor progressions. Traver spends ample time discussing both preventative and remedial measures that are based on her own studies as well as widespread medical data. It is a program that has had demonstrably successful results but more importantly, it is presented in a way that could not be easier to follow. Traver’s work is a breakthrough in presentation and therefore highly recommended.

Dr. Daniel Amen’s latest ‘Change Your Brain, Change Your Body: Use Your Brain to Get and Keep the Body You Have Always Wanted’ is less of the traditional folksy-health wisdom, as much as it is a consumer facing scientific study of exactly how the brain works to insure (or debilitate) the quest for better health. Though example after example, using neurological testing and imaging, Amen explains his basic premise ‘when your brain works right, your body looks and feels better. When your brain is troubled, you have trouble with how you look and feel.’ In his 372 page manifesto, Amen revels his formula for health improvement and ‘brain-boosting’ via everything from hormonal therapy, exercise, diet (brain food) and more – complete with action steps and tracking journals – to create positive effects in addressing conditions like chronic stress, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, brain trauma, lack of sleep, personal energy and much more. While Amen appears to have the solution for every disease, he at least offers a comprehensive plan for combating most major preventable diseases with a wide variety of methods that may have the effect of eliminating or at least inhibiting the onset of such maladies. Beyond this book, Amen has a long series of books (‘Magnificent Mind at Any Age,’ ‘Change Your Brain, Change Your Life’) that cover similar and related subjects. He also runs four regional clinics as well as a website (amenclinics.com) that features more advice plus a series of 3-D brain spect images revealing the effects of his treatments.

More on Travers: the MD Health Evolution

More on Daniel Amen: AmenClinics.com

Why Mr. RIght Can’t Find You: The Surprising Answers that Will Change Your Life – and His by J.M. Kearns (Wiley)

It’s date night (at least that’s what Tina Fey and Steve Carrell are hoping for, as their movie of the same name opens soon) so what better time to bring you a book that attacks the many myths surrounding dating and mating; myths that according to author J.M. Kearns, are holding women back from finding the man of their dreams.

You hear it all the time: “All of the good ones are either married or gay,” “I could never go to a bar alone!,” etc, etc. Well in Kearns view, these are nothing more than excuses as to why singledom in the dating age demographics is at an all-time high. In ‘Why Mr. Right…’, Kearns seeks to dispel the many myths of dating that he feels hold women back from accomplishing their mating goals, by giving a series of practical lessons on how to break through the various barriers holding them back.

Kearns contends that there are many Mr. Rights out there waiting for the woman of their dreams, but that women are not applying themselves when it comes to finding them (similar to the conclusions drawn by Lori Gottleib in her latest book, “Marry Him.”) Though a series of discussions that range from friendly advice to gentle admonishment, Kearns explodes the myths that women carry around in their heads about why it’s impossible to find a decent man. He tackles issues like the world of bars and online as well as teaching women how to recognize the elusive ’sighting’ and how to remain approachable instead of oblivious to oft-times subtle signals.

The final third of the book is dedicated to the world of online dating, where Kearns allows that the medium has evolved to the point where it is far from viewed as strange or deviant but is now a regular part of the singles scene and, in his view, the perfect place to get a made-to-order match that might otherwise take years in the physical world – if you know best how to use the platform. But despite his lead up, Kearns mostly elucidates the features of such sites without revealing much in the way of next-level strategies. There are ultimately better books devoted to this specific endeavor.

Kearns goes far beyond the title – the mid section of the book is all about compatibility issues – but in the final analysis, “Why Mr. Right” is a worthy read for anyone who feel stuck in a dating rut. As for Fey and Carrell, I guess we’ll find out how well they do shortly.

Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough – Lori Gottleib (Dutton)

If there is any justice in the world, what looks like a book, should become a movement.

Author and single mother Lori Gottleib, has taken what began as an article in the Atlantic and turned it into a book that nails what has evolved into the ‘picky womens movement’ that unfortunately is keeping young women from getting into marriage until it’s nearly too late. And while some may conclude that Gottleib’s mantra of ’settling’ (a potentially disturbing word choice when exploring the subject of love) is both anti-feminist and downright depressing, her pitch for the philosophy of ‘get-realism’ is adroitly presented within these pages.

By interviewing a series of matchmakers, authors, academics, dating coaches and the like, Gottlieb makes the case that single women in their 20’s to mid-30’s have become far too picky to ever settle down with anyone despite their desire to ultimately do just that. She cites data that shows that while men, even in the most dateable age range, are happy to find a woman with three great traits (she’s smart, funny and wants to have a family), women can come up with 300 reasons why a guy might not fit their target idea of a match after only one date. (“He wore a black belt with brown shoes, can you even believe it!”)

As Gottleib attempts to explain the factors that have made dating a haywire experience for both sexes in the new millennium (i.e. maximizers vs. satisficers), she also weaves in her own story of trying to find Mr. Right past age 40. As both author and subject, she attempts to find a guy through coaches and dating services, only to pass on ones who then get away as she eventually discovers that passing on an ‘8′ leaves you with a stable of ‘5s’ and ‘6s’ as time goes by.

Some have said that Gottleib’s Atlantic article was enough of the story and that an entire book on the subject is superfluous. We say, au contrare. ‘Marry Him’ sounds like just the beginning of what is needed to turn the sails of courtship around so that both sides end up happier. Not only is this a must read for single (men and) women in their 20s and 30s, it should be the beginning of a whole TV series/seminar/coaching movement that reaches far beyond the bookshelf.

Oprah, are you listening?

Lori Gottleib’s website

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