Wildlands Philanthropy: How America Saves Open Spaces

Wildlands Philanthropy: The Great American Tradition

A sturdy coffee-table is a must for exploring the glorious new in-depth book of essays and photos on America's wonderful places preserved in their natural state by dedicated philanthropists.

Wildlands Philanthropy: The Great American Traditionfeatures essays by Tom Butler with photos by Antonio Vizcaino in a large format coffee-table book with an accompanying DVD that tell the stories of generous people who have given of their wealth and energy to save wild places.

In his Forward, broadcaster Tom Brokaw says, "In this book you will come to know the priceless gifts of the visionaries who came before and showed the way with land-based philanthropy. We honor them by recognizing their selfless contributions and, most of all, by continuing their honorable ways."

The stories of these philanthropists and the lands they have saved are told in chronological order. They begin with the tale of how William Kent outmaneuvered a private water utility to turn 295 acres on California's Mount Tamalpais into the Muir Woods National Monument with the help of President Theodore Roosevelt.

Some of the stories illuminate the lives of little-known philanthropists such as 3M heiress Katharine Ordway, who used her wealth to fund Nature Conservancy purchases of prairie grasslands in Minnesota, Missouri, and Kansas, such as the 13 square mile Konza Prairie.

Butler writes, "The great fortune she inherited came from converting the earth's natural capital into products for the marketplace. It was not her choice to be born into wealth, but when a passion for the prairie sank deep roots in her, she chose to reinvest in the land."

Some of the stories recount the achievements of better-known philanthropists such as Richard Goldman, the San Francisco insurance executive who has used his fortune to fund the annual Goldman Environmental Prize.

Goldman's donation of $5 million in 2001 has underwritten Alaska land conservation projects from Cape Bingham on Yakobi Island to an addition to the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve, where the world's largest concentration of bald eagles gathers each year.

Read more about Wildlands Philanthropy here, or get a copy now!

Novel Offers Glimpse Into Origins of Psychoanalytic Movement

Vienna Triangle

Brenda Webster's new novel, Vienna Triangle,offers a fascinating glimpse into the origins of the psychoanalytic movement. She explores some of the most brilliant members of Sigmund Freud's inner circle of disciples, especially Viktor Tausk, whose tragic and unexpected suicide in 1918 continues to generate controversy among Freud's defenders and critics. Webster, who has published several acclaimed literary studies, novels and memoirs, including The Last Good Freudian(2000), combines her impressive knowledge of Freudian theory with a novelist's intuitive understanding of character and point of view.

The novel's sympathetic heroine, Kate, is a 28-year old woman who is pursuing a graduate degree in psychology at Columbia and writing her dissertation on the early female psychoanalysts. As the story opens in the turbulent late 1960s, she meets an elderly Polish woman, Helene Rosenbach, who turns out to be Helene Deutsch, one of the most influential of the early Freudian psychoanalysts, famous (or infamous) for her theory of "penis envy" and women's innate masochism. While conducting her research, Kate makes an astonishing personal discovery, which she shares with Deutsch: Kate's mysterious grandfather, about whom her mother never talks, turns out to be Tausk. Part of the novel's achievement is that Kate's research into the early history of psychoanalysis parallels her deepening understanding of her own origins.

No less than Kate, Webster has done her homework in researching historical psychoanalysts. We learn a great deal about the unstable Tausk, who had a deeply ambivalent relationship with Freud, as well as Freud himself, who despite his "heroic" self-analysis, comes across as a man who often borrowed others' ideas without acknowledgment, and who tolerated no dissent from his followers. We also learn about Lou Andreas-Salomé, who was infatuated not only with Freud but also with Nietzsche and Rilke.

Read more about this psychoanalytical novel here, or get a copy now!

A Children's Book for Winter: A Folktale From Turks and Caicos

Where is Simon, Sandy? The Story of the Donkey that Wouldn't Quit


Looking for something to thaw your heart from all of this snow and ice? I've found the perfect winter read: Where is Simon, Sandy? The Story of the Donkey that Wouldn't Quitwritten by Donna Marie Seim and illustrated by Susan Spellman. It is a folktale from the Turks and Caicos Islands set on the island of Grand Turk. The story is about Simon and his donkey, Sandy, who take water to the people of Cockburn Town every morning. One morning Simon does not come out of his cottage which worried the donkey. Sandy goes to the well without her master to look for him. Sandy stops at each gate/ home along the route looking for Simon. As Sandy searches for Simon a parade of neighborhood children join her in the search and ask, "Where is Simon, Sandy?"

Eventually Sandy and the children reach the last gate on the route, which belongs to the town doctor. The doctor asks Sandy where Simon is and her response is to turn around and walk toward's Simon's home where she brays. The doctor realizes that something is wrong with Simon and when he enters the house he finds that Simon has injured his foot. Simon must rest his foot until he recovers which worries him. After all, who will take the water to the people of the village?

The neighborhood children agree to pitch in and help Sandy deliver the water. They also agree to help feed and care for her until Simon is well. The children have so much fun delivering the water to the village that they continue to help Sandy and Simon with the task even after Simon is able to walk again.

Read more about Sandy the Donkey here, or get a copy now!

Two Books on Money for These Tough Economic and Financial Times

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

Money is the root of all...progress. Now there’s something you don’t hear every day outside the confines of Wall Street.

Here’s another: The trouble with poor people is that they don’t have enough banks. And one more: The biggest fault of our financial system is not in the institutions, but in ourselves.

These ideas aren’t entirely original, but bestselling Scottish historian Niall Ferguson gives them new life in The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World,an engaging and convincing exploration of humankind’s love affair with lucre, filthy and otherwise.

Ferguson’s goal is to educate a general audience in a world where many people are clueless about finances. Two-thirds of Americans, for instance, don’t understand how compound interest works, and just 14 percent of high school seniors knew that stocks are more likely than government bonds to make more money over 18 years.

The Ascent of Moneyis not always easy reading.

Ferguson deftly intertwines the history of money with the story of human progress, profiling extraordinary personalities along the way, but there are places where even readers with some financial background may have trouble navigating the complicated explanations of monetary topics.

Yet despite occasional tough sledding, The Ascent of Moneyis an enjoyable read, thanks to Ferguson’s personable and perceptive voice and his keen ability to link the past to the present and vice versa.

Read more about the book or get a copy now!


The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America, Second Edition

Currently the second richest person in the world after Bill Gates, Warren Buffett is also arguably the most successful investor of all time. Countless books have been written about him, but The Essays of Warren Buffett(edited by Lawrence Cunningham) is the only compendium of writings from the Sage of Omaha himself.

Cunningham’s book is a carefully chosen selection of Buffett’s famous annual letters to shareholders in Berkshire Hathaway, the fantastically profitable holding company that he has managed since the 1970s with partner Charlie Munger. Though it still owns large stakes in many publicly listed companies, it also buys outstanding private companies, which in 2006 had collective revenues of close to $100 billion.
Apart from a youthful apprenticeship with his mentor Benjamin Graham when he lived in New York, Buffett has always lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and his approach to investing is a long way from Wall Street in every sense. His letters to shareholders are eagerly anticipated because they contain many simple nuggets of wisdom, often delivered through amusing anecdotes or pithy sayings.

The following are some themes that emerge from his writings.

Look for underlying value

For Buffett, the key to winning in the stock market does not lie in predicting the market’s direction, but in knowing the value of businesses, irrespective of their current quoted price. He criticizes investment advisers who waste time making forecasts about the economy, when it is much more important to find good businesses that will remain good for years to come.

Read more about Buffett's themes, or get a copy of The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America now!

Conversations With Jazz Musicians: New Book Offers Rare Insights

The Jazz Ear: Conversations over Music

In the jazz world, the ability to hear, conceptualize, compose or improvise with idiosyncrasy and sophistication requires big ears.

Ben Ratliff is one of America's best and biggest-eared music journalists. For instance, in his excellent Coltrane: The Story of a Sound(2007), a critique of John Coltrane's algebraic and mythical musical prowess, Mr. Ratliff combines jazz history, cultural analysis and music theory into an elegant narrative.

With The Jazz Ear: Conversations over Music,Mr. Ratliff has collected pieces from his New York Times series, "Listening With," refashioning the conversations into 15 contiguous chapters that illustrate the importance of both classical and pop music to modern jazz composition and improvisation. More important, Mr. Ratliff's questions often steer his responders from music theory to emotional response to sentimental remembrance, teaching readers how to open their ears and listen in new ways.

Using predetermined song set lists to focus their conversations, the journalist and the jazz musicians become tutors: speaking in languages that seem derived from their own musical compositions, the saxophone geniuses Ornette Coleman and Wayne Shorter offer up halting, elliptical and cosmic declarations about how to discern modern concepts at work in Kyrgyzstani folk music and Vaughn Williams symphonies. Listening to the Count Basie Orchestra, a specific Jo Jones high-hat pattern spurs Roy Haynes, legendary bebop drummer, to unfold the history of modern jazz percussion.

And a repeated baritone saxophone figure on a recording of Dizzy Gillespie's "Manteca" allows the Cuban pianist, Bebo Valdés,to detail exuberantly the genetic lineage between Afro-Cuban rhythms and bebop swing.

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Make 2009 Your Healthiest Year Yet: New Cookbook Has All the Recipes

Healthiest Meals on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth About What Meals to Eat and Why

First, there's the look and feel of this volume. I admit I'm not drawn to the cover art -- it's probably one of my least-favorite things about this book. But I like the hefty size of it and the durable stock of the 368 pages, and as I began flipping through them, I was enchanted by the photography. There are lush photographs of each polymeal, and nearly every recipe is accompanied by a mouth-watering picture of the dish, presented with antique kitchenware and utensils. The two-page photographic spreads throughout are stunning -- coffee-table quality, in fact: cattle grazing in a lush pasture, salmon leaping in an icy river, sacks of colorful spices, a brilliant cranberry bog, a farm field with soil so rich you can almost feel it, a sunlit orchard, a pomegranate dripping with goodness. The theme of the photography is clear: simplicity and purity, reverence for unspoiled land, and gratitude for the bounty it offers.

After drinking in the visuals, I began reading, and I must say Healthiest Meals on Earthis something of a page-turner. It's as though Bowden is sitting on a stool in the corner of your kitchen, chatting amiably about the wonderful qualities of the meal as you assemble its ingredients. He tells you why fat isn't all bad, why sugar pretty much is (and what you can happily use in its place), why grains are overrated, why fiber is fabulous, the importance of omegas, and so on and on -- all in the context of quite wonderful meals that turn those concepts into delicious reality.

I was already familiar with the idea of the polymeal, but this is the first cookbook I've come across that offers a collection of them. The idea is to combine ingredients that boost cardiovascular health -- things like fish, garlic, almonds, fruits, vegetables, dark chocolate and red wine. Bowden takes it further, though, including foods with anti-cancer properties, foods that boost the immune system, foods that fight inflammation, foods that combat obesity -- and much, much more. Thanks to his collaborator, Jeannette Bessinger, CHHC, these foods are combined in innovative recipes that even a cook with modest abilities can enjoy putting together.

It was only after I read every word of this cookbook that I actually began experimenting with the recipes, and I haven't stopped. After preparing more than a dozen of these dishes, I can tell that Healthiest Meals on Earthis destined to spend a lot more time on the counter than many of the other books on my kitchen shelf.

Among my favorites are real-food brownies -- sugarless and flourless, they're made with dates, cocoa, garbanzo beans, eggs, agave nectar and a few other ingredients. I made holiday gifts of these and haven't found anyone they failed to delight. My family also especially enjoyed the tamari-orange salmon, delicious dal, red beans and brown rice, chili with cashews and kale, and chicken curry. This book is a good mix of meatless and meat-based recipes, which works well for our mixed family. (I've experimented with some of the meat recipes to accommodate our vegetarians, and found them quite readily adaptable.)

Read more about the book or get a copy now!

The Secrets of Wealth: New Book Delves into Rich Life

Rich Like Them: My Door-to-Door Search for the Secrets of Wealth in America's Richest Neighborhoods

Suppose you wanted to write a book about “how the other half lives.” Well, make that how the 1-in-200 lives. You could dig up statistics on the wealthy, chronicle those who are showy in our society, and write a book about the glamour of the well-to-do.

Now imagine that instead of doing that, you decided to start knocking on the doors of estates, and ask the owners how they achieved their august status. For the one in four that humored your request you would learn some interesting truths that are pretty plebian. That is the story told in Rich Like Them: My Door-to-Door Search for the Secrets of Wealth in America's Richest Neighborhoods.

The author, Ryan D’Agostino spent time traveling through the 100 wealthiest zip codes in the US, getting stories from the wealthy that would give him time. He tells the tales in the mode of a storyteller, loosely organized under five chapters, and teaching the following lessons:

• Find opportunities that others don’t see.
• So-called luck favors those who are prepared to profit from volatility.
• Love what you do. Do what you love.
• Take risks. If you work smart and hard, those risks will be reduced.
• Be humble. Realize what you can’t do, and work on what you can do.

Read the rest of the review here, or get the book now!