Cool Book Of The Day

Pitch reporters with our up-to-date media databases:

Question: Who is the intended audience?
Answer: This is a nonfiction book recommended for ages 18 and up.

Q: What is the book about?
A: Best friends since they met at medical school twenty-five years ago, Dr. Debra Luftman, a Beverly Hills dermatologist, and Dr. Eva Ritvo, a South Beach psychiatrist, join their expertise to take a unique look at beauty of the body and mind in the The Beauty Prescription-a guide to getting beautiful, inside and out.

Their empowering message that all women are beautiful will allow readers to:

Learn the art of self care in today’s busy world.

Care for your health, the foundation of beauty.

Play to your strengths, mentally and physically.

They also provide a Life Beauty Plan as you age, describing what you need to do in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s to look more youthful and keep your skin healthy. Dr. Debra also helps you shop for the face products that work with price points for every budget.

Q: Why are you the best person to write this book?
A: Dr. Eva Ritvo is a psychiatrist and Dr. Debra Luftman is a dermatologist. This is the first beauty book that is written by two physicians in these specialties.

These charismatic physicians have redefined beauty around a groundbreaking and enabling concept: The Beauty-Brain Loop.

Busting beauty myths

How to see beauty in everything around you.

Making time to get fit and healthy.

Understanding beauty products and cosmetic procedures.

How a kind, loving, positive demeanor makes you more attractive.

Staying beautiful in times of crisis.

Q: How is this book different from other books on this topic?
A: This book helps women enhance their self-esteem and their looks and teaches them how to make the most of each one.

Q: Is there anything else we should know about this book?
A: The book has many real, some moving, personal stories from Beauty Buddies, tips on physical and psychological wellness, and wisdom from top professionals in the beauty industry. The Beauty Prescription is an owner’s manual for every woman who is ready to move beyond today’s narrow definition of beauty.

For more information, visit: www.thebeautyprescription.com

Pitch reporters with our up-to-date media databases:

Question: Who is the intended audience?
Answer: People in internal and external service roles; owners of small businesses; supervisors of internal service-providing units.

Q: What is the book about?
A: How to reinvent, decorate, and animate customer experiences.  How to choose the right imaginative service strategy for your unit and your customers.  How to insure the sustainability of imaginative service.  How to turn satisfied or retained customers into devoted fans.

Q: Why are you the best person to write this book?
A: I have been a customer loyalty consultant for almost 30 years working with some of the best organizations in the world for service. (Ritz-Carlton Hotels, Cadillac, USAA, etc.) and have authored several best-selling books on customer loyalty.

Q: How is this book different from other books on this topic?
A: It has a gazillion practical ways to focus on creative value-unique experiences rather than on expensive value-added extras.  It has cover endorsements from people like best-selling author Seth Godin, the president of SW Airlines, as well as the retired president of Starbucks.  It will be Wiley’s lead business title for this spring.

Q: Is there anything else we should know about this book?
A: Yes, we have hired the best book publicity firm in the U.S. (Goldberg, McDuffie) who made best-sellers out of First, Break all the Rules, Execution, Jack: Straight from the Gut and Call Me Ted.

Pitch reporters with our up-to-date media databases:

Question: Who is the intended audience?
Answer: Leaders with responsibility for organizations, teams, tasks, and personal relationships. That includes executives, managers, and team leaders, as well as anyone interested in becoming more effective by improving their professional and personal relationships.

Q: What is the book about?
A: This is a guidebook to effective apology. The central conclusion of Effective Apology is that the willingness and ability to apologize are critical requirements of leaders today. The book supports this conclusion with over 75 examples of apology, both effective and ineffective, taken from the worlds of business, politics, sports, popular culture, and relationships. Leaders who believe that accountability, transparency, and humility are the hallmarks of modern leadership must understand the role apology plays in earning confidence, maintaining trust, and repairing mistakes.

Q: Why are you the best person to write this book?
A: As a practicing business journalist for over 30 years, I’ve had the opportunity to study thousands of companies and their leaders. Many years ago I began to notice something interesting. Organizations and leaders that had a culture of apology and taking responsibility for their mistakes tend to be more successful than those which resist apologizing and deny responsibility.

I have also seen that personal relationships follow the same pattern. Marriages, friends, parent-child relationships all benefit when one or both parties know how to apologize. I have been successfully married for 34 years not because I haven’t made any mistakes, but because I have a certain capacity for taking responsibility for those mistakes and apologizing sooner rather than later.

This book brings together my professional and personal experiences to support my conclusion that apology is not free, but it’s less expensive than the alternatives of lying, denial, spinning, and stonewalling.

Q: How is this book different from other books on this topic?
A: Effective Apology is a practical, hands-on fieldbook on how to apologize. It offers practical suggestions, lists, suggested wording, and concrete advice on when to apologize and how to apologize in a variety of recognizable situations. Other books on apology tend to be philosophical or academic.

My book is hands-on. It shows you what to say and what not to say. It focuses on the role of apology in repairing relationships and further reconciliation. The book argues that there is but one test of effective apology: does the apology tend to repair the relationship that has been strained and support the eventual reconciliation of the parties.

Q: Is there anything else we should know about this book?
A: The book defines apology as the practice of extending yourself because you value the relationship more than you value the need to be right.

How do you know when you have apologized? Try this test.

Did you state in plain language what you did wrong? Did you accept responsibility for those errors without defensiveness or hedging? Did you express remorse (“I’m sorry”) in direct and personal terms? Did you offer appropriate restitution? Did you promise not to repeat the offense?

If your apology embraces each of these five components, you have offered a wholehearted apology. The book describes these five steps as the Five Rs: Recognition (“yes, I lost the cell phone you I borrowed from you.”), Responsibility (“I’m responsible. I was thoughtless with your property.”), Remorse (“I’m sorry.”), Restitution (“Of course, I’ll replace your phone.”), and Repetition (“I promise to be more careful in the future”).

Apology in a networked world is about giving up the desire to control the conversation. The willingness to apologize signals strength, character, and integrity—real leadership is impossible without it. Human progress occurs one apology at a time.

More information about the book is available www.effectiveapology.com

Pitch reporters with our up-to-date media databases:

Question: Who is the intended audience?
Answer: General public, Professionals in mental health, social psychology, education, business, and other agents of change.

Q: What is the book about?
A: The book explores the effects of today’s accelerated pace of change on our psychological, personal, social and political life, and provides evidence that creativity and relationship/networking skills are core competencies for success in 21st century life.

Research shows that people can acquire the “stress-resilient thinking skills” and creative capacities needed to navigate this complex, inter-connected and ever-changing social landscape. This book explores the impact of cultural, economic and political forces on our sense of self, relationships and ways of thinking, and the power that each of us possess to shape our collective future.

Q: Why are you the best person to write this book?
A: I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Creative Arts Therapist and Certified Group Psychotherapist who has been active as an agent of change for 27 years; both in my professional life as a therapist, trainer and writer/performer and in my personal commitment to psychological growth and community service.

As a creative arts therapist working in the medical model, I have always had to break through systemic barriers and conventional thinking to establish the validity of my holistic approach.

My experiences working with a broad range of humanity – from the chronically mentally ill in homeless shelters and psychiatric hospitals at one end of the success spectrum to staff of large organizations (e.g. The New York Public Library) and agencies going through massive institutional change at the other – have provided me a real-time view of the ways social trends impact peoples’ inner and outer lives.

From the very beginning of my career I have designed presentations and workshops that engage professionals and non-professionals in creative ways of thinking that challenge stagnant, but deeply-ingrained habits of mind that are simply not adequate to meet the challenges of 21st century life.

I have published in academic journals on the topic of creativity in the process of personal change and social transformation, and have been interviewed for articles about creativity, stress-resilience, and other creativity and arts-related themes that appeared in Women’s Day magazine, New York Newsday, L.A. Times, Recovery Press, Boomers magazine, and other publications.

Q: How is this book different from other books on this topic?
A: This book is different from other books about creativity and the knowledge economy in 21st century life in that it integrates research and information from the worlds of social psychology with marketing, business, and finance to form a more complete picture of the range of social forces that influence our psychological and emotional lives.

It combines knowledge about the ways that advertising and consumer culture are changing our brains and the way we experience life, as well as the brain chemistry and neurological joyride that is creative experience. What separates this book from others about creativity and 21st century life is the inclusion of a wide range of studies connecting the fragmented, compartmentalized knowledge about creativity, connection and consciousness.

Q: Is there anything else we should know about this book?
A: Some key points:

• The ways that advertising, media pressures, and other aspects of high-tech society influence our worldview and habits of mind;

• Social capital and its relationship to mental and physical health, stress-resilience and sustainability in the future;

• Music in brain development, health and social connection;

• The ways that consumer culture continually redesigns what it means to have a good-enough life, with impacts on our sense of self, family life, and health.

• How arts training, creative development, and creative experiences grow the brain, strengthen psychological resilience and the dynamic interactions between our personal choices and the direction of our future.

For more information, visit www.thespeedoflife.com.