Thursday, August 30, 2007

Now, Discover Your Strengths


By Marcus Buckingham, Donald O. Clifton

Now, Discover Your Strengths is a book that is focusing on enhancing people's strengths rather than eliminating their weaknesses.Marcus Buckingham, who is a member of the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Leadership and Management; started as a senior researcher with The Gallup Organization and Donald O. Clifton, Chair of the Gallup International Research & Education Center developed the Strengths-based approach to management that is now gaining wider implementation.

This book fully describes positive personality themes the two have formulated (such as Achiever, Developer, Learner, and Maximizer) and explains how to build a "strengths-based organization" by capitalizing on the fact that such traits are already present among those within it.

Unfortunately, most of us have little sense of our talents and strengths, much less the ability to build our lives around them. Instead, guided by our parents, by our teachers, by our managers, and by psychology's fascination with pathology, we become experts in our weaknesses and spend our lives trying to repair these flaws, while our strengths lie dormant and neglected.

Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton have created a revolutionary program to help readers identify their talents, build them into strengths, and enjoy consistent, near-perfect performance. At the heart of the book is the Internet-based StrengthsFinder® Profile, the product of a 25-year, multimillion-dollar effort to identify the most prevalent human strengths. The program introduces 34 dominant "themes" with thousands of possible combinations, and reveals how they can best be translated into personal and career success. In developing this program, Gallup has conducted psychological profiles with more than two million individuals to help readers learn how to focus and perfect these themes.

his book contains a unique identification number that allows you access to the StrengthsFinder Profile on the Internet.The book will show you how to leverage them for powerful results at three levels: for your own development, for your success as a manager, and for the success of your organization.

With accessible and profound insights on how to turn talents into strengths, and with the immediate on-line feedback of StrengthsFinder at its core, Now, Discover Your Strengths is one of the most groundbreaking and useful business books ever written.





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Thursday, August 23, 2007

The World Without Us



By Alan Weisman


In The World Without Us,a penetrating, page-turning tour of a post-human Earth, Alan Weisman postulates the complete disappearance of mankind from planet Earth. Then he extrapolates about what would happen without us. By his estimate most of our leavings would rot and crumble; much of our damage would take eons to undo. There's one tiny bit of good news. Depleted sea species might recover if we would do them a favor and go away.offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity’s impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us.
Alan Weisman embarks on an audacious intellectual adventure: He tries to imagine what the world would be like if humans suddenly disappeared. "How would the rest of nature respond if it were suddenly relieved of the relentless pressures we heap on it and our fellow organisms? How soon would, or could, the climate return to where it was before we fired up all our engines? How long would it take to recover lost ground and restore Eden to the way it must have gleamed and smelled the day before Adam, or homo habilis, appeared? And,could nature ever obliterate all our traces?"

In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.

The World Without Us reveals how, just days after humans disappear, floods in New York’s subways would start eroding the city’s foundations, and how, as the world’s cities crumble, asphalt jungles would give way to real ones.
When Alan Weisman wonders what would happen to New York City, he foresees rewilding (the return of wolves and bears), plants forcing their ways through the sidewalk and water damage to the underground infrastructure.

The World Without Us describes the distinct ways that organic and chemically treated farms would revert to wild, how billions more birds would flourish, and how cockroaches in unheated cities would perish without us. Drawing on the expertise of engineers, atmospheric scientists, art conservators, zoologists, oil refiners, marine biologists, astrophysicists, religious leaders from rabbis to the Dali Lama, and paleontologists,who describe a prehuman world inhabited by megafauna like giant sloths that stood taller than mammoths,Weisman illustrates what the planet might be like today, if not for us.

Weisman reveals Earth’s tremendous capacity for self-healing. As he shows which human devastations are indelible, and which examples of our highest art and culture would endure longest, Weisman’s narrative ultimately drives toward a radical but persuasive solution that needn't depend on our demise. It is narrative nonfiction at its finest, and in posing an irresistible concept with both gravity and a highly readable touch, it looks deeply at our effects on the planet in a way that no other book has.
The World Without Us is a must read for all human beings as it will get anyone who reads it to start seriously thinking about our impact on our home.
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Saturday, July 7, 2007


By Tina Brown


With “The Diana Chronicles,” Tina Brown breathes new life into the saga of this royal “icon of blondness” by astutely revealing just how powerful, and how marketable, her story became in the age of modern celebrity journalism....Tina Brown offers an insightful, absorbing account of the pas de deux into which, to her eventual peril, Diana joined with the paparazzi. As the former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, Brown certainly has the authority to examine the Princess of Wales as a creation and a casualty of the media glare.


This book is a deep, well researched biography. Tina Brown relied not only on published sources but also on interviews with many of Diana's friends, servants, and relations. This, along with her own experience as a journalist and editor covering Diana, makes The Diana Chronicles an excellent read.


Diana seemed destined for either obscurity or greatness from the moment of her birth. She disappointed her parents, who desperately wanted a son and heir, and spent her early childhood being more or less ignored in favor of her two older and brighter sisters and her younger brother. Her parents divorced when she was five or six, increasing Diana's isolation and insecurities. During these years she began to develop the maternal instincts for which she became famous and the vindictiveness and cunning for which she was also well known.Tina Brown does an excellent job of describing Diana's antecedents.


The Spencer family had been servants and supporters of the Crown for centuries, but as Brown makes clear, it was a Crown and Royal Family which they and other Whig aristocrats controlled and helped create beginning in the eighteenth century. Diana's family home was Althorp House, a magnificent mansion filled with portraits and memories of years of power and influence. Diana was very aware of her heritage and saw herself as a reinforcer and reviver of her family's fortunes.


Diana seems to have hoped and planned for a great marriage from an early age. Brown emphasizes Diana's determination to "keep herself tidy" during her teenage years, when most of her contemporaries were partaking of the benefits/problems of "the pre-AIDS sexual revolution". Diana's self-control paid off when Prince Charles decided that he needed to get married and needed to marry a girl without a history. Diana was in the right place at the right time, seemed innocent and malleable enough, and most importantly had the blessings of Charles' real love, Camilla Parker-Bowles.


After Diana's marriage reality quickly infringed on the fairy tale. Tina Brown does an equable job of detailing the numerous sins and errors of both Diana and Charles. Like most people she finally comes down on Diana's side, pointing out that had Charles been willing or able to give up Camilla forever Diana would happily have had 10 children by him and been content to become a willing and cooperative member of the House of Windsor. Brown also takes care to critically examine and in many cases debunk many of the stories Diana told about the miserable treatment meted out to her, so that Charles and the rest of the Royal Family come out far better than Diana intended.


The best parts of the book deal with Diana's final years and the tragedy of August 31, 1997. It was heartbreaking to read about and re-experience those sad days, but gratifying to see Brown's justification of and sympathy with the actions of the Royal Family during that time. I also appreciated Brown's sympathetic treatment of Diana's numerous physical and emotional problems, including bulimia. These chapters heightened my sympathy and concern for Diana's sons, who must still have psychic scars.


A main character in these "chronicles" is the media itself, an institution which Brown dissects with the shrewd, experienced eye of an insider, explaining "who's who" in the British newspaper and TV culture, the pecking order among various media players and organizations, and the priorities, jealousies and politics that drive the pursuit of celebrities such as Diana.
Another reason to read The Diana Chronicles is that it is a chronicle of our own recent history. Diana so dominated the popular press in Europe and America for so many years that everybody, even those who otherwise paid little attention to royalty, saw her as a familiar figure and acquaintance.
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Saturday, April 21, 2007

Slaughterhouse-Five


By Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut's classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Billy simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Kurt Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.
It isn't a conventional, or simple, novel.Vonnegut writes, "There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters..."
Slaughterhouse-Five (taken from the name of the building where the POWs were held) is not only Karl Vonnegut's most powerful book, it is as important as any written since 1945. Like Catch- 22, it fashions the author's experiences in the World War II into an eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it a unique poignancy and humor.
On the surface, it's the story of a World War II veteran who survives the infamous firebombing of Dresden. But it is much more.Billy Pilgrim says he has become "unstuck in time". He lives his life both in random order and all at once; in a fourth dimension of time travel. This concept of the fourth dimension, he says, was explained to him by alien beings called Trafalmordians. Whether you regard Billy Pilgrim as just another psyche-damaged, delusional war veteran or take him at his word is not important. It is Kurt Vonnegut's underlying anti-war message that is important.
The book is primarily satire, screaming anti-war sentiments and protesting against the destructive consequences of war and its mentally damaging effects on the soldiers
The story is full of black humour as Kurt Vonnegut details the minutiae of Billy's seemingly normal post-war life as an optometrist and the horrors of his war experience. The juxtaposition of these two extremes as he jumps back and forth in time makes Vonnegut's anti-war message all the more effective.
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Monday, April 9, 2007

An Inconvenient Truth


Directed by Davis Guggenheim

"An Inconvenient Truth".directed by Davis Guggenheim.reviews the scientific evidence for global warming, discusses the politics and economics of global warming, and describes the consequences global climate change will produce if the amount of human-generated greenhouse gases is not significantly reduced in the future.
Davis Guggenheim's hands-off approach makes this documentary startlingly effective; we're told what we need to know about the speaker (Al Gore) as the speaker is given his opportunity to present his argument on the effects of global warming with very little interruption.And he is straightforward without being blatantly alarmist.The film premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and opened in New York and Los Angeles on May 24, 2006 and it is the third-highest-grossing documentary in the United States to date.
The former vice President of the United States, Al Gore, presents a compelling documentary in this documentary about man's effect on the environment.It is a argument that simply cannot fail to strike fear into the hearts of all those who see it.it is a call to action for everybody.This film sends the extremely important message,supported by current research : that global warming is a real threat,largely human-caused and if we do nothing to stop it our homes may become uninhabitable before we know what has happened.
An Inconvenient Truth is the film that includes many segments intended to refute critics who say that global warming is insignificant or unproven. For example,Al Gore discusses the risk of the collapse of a major ice sheet in Greenland or in West Antarctica, either of which could raise global sea levels by approximately 20 feet (6m), flooding coastal areas and producing millions of refugees. Meltwater from Greenland, because of its lower salinity, could halt the Gulf Stream current and quickly trigger dramatic local cooling in Northern Europe.
That point gives An Inconvenient Truth its power; what may be a big-screen lecture actually carries with it an incredibly meaningful message ; Al Gore seeks not to criticise everybody for what is happening but rather to inspire us to do something about it before it's too late.
In an effort to explain the global warming phenomenon, the film examines annual temperature and CO2 levels for the past 600,000 years in Antarctic ice core. An analogy to Hurricane Katrina is used for those familiar with the 30-ft to 45-ft (9 to 14m) waves that destroyed almost a million homes in coastal Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama.
The Associated Press contacted more than 100 world's leading researchers on global warming and questioned them about the film's veracity.This was at the time before the film's general release and many of those surveyed had neither seen the movie nor read the book, but all 19 climate scientists who had done so said that Al Gore conveyed the science correctly.
The documentary ends with Gore noting that if appropriate action is taken soon, the effects of global warming can be reversed by releasing less carbon dioxide and growing more plants or trees,and Al Gore calls upon viewers to learn how they can help in this initiative.
Al Gore makes clear to anyone in opposition that the tools to reverse climate changes are at hand and that the economic consequences of solving the problem are positive,not negative. The idea that responsible environmental protection is bad for the economy is exposed in this documentary through facts and science for what it is "a Big Lie".
Overall,it is a film that needs to be seen by every single person on this planet.The bits of animation are eye-catching, and Al Gore's humor is appropriately dispersed throughout.This isn't some platform Gore picked up in the last few years; this is something Al Gore has been fighting for his whole life, which gives him a credible voice in this issue.
"An Inconvenient Truth" won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.Al Gore accepted the award, saying : “My fellow Americans, people all over the world,we need to solve the climate crisis. It’s not a political issue. It’s a moral issue. We have everything we need to get started with the possible exception of the will to act. That’s a renewable resource. Let’s renew it.”
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Saturday, April 7, 2007

The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
By Malcolm Gladwell
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Malcolm Gladwell is a Canadian journalist now based in New York City who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996.His 1999 profile of Ron Popeil won a National Magazine Award.He was selected as one of Time’s 100 most influential people for 2005. Gladwell is the author of two bestselling books: "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference," and "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" , both of which were number one New York Times bestsellers.From 1987 to 1996, he was a reporter with the Washington Post, where he covered business, science, and then served as the newspaper's New York City bureau chief. He graduated from the University of Toronto, Trinity College, with a degree in history. He was born in England, grew up in rural Ontario, and now lives in New York City .

In "The Tipping Point" Malcolm Gladwell is arguing that the spread of cultural trends can be compared with the spread of disease in an epidemic. In a disease outbreak, there's often a "tipping point" a point at which the virus or bacteria start spreading much more rapidly than before, often with no obvious cause for the change. Malcolm Gladwell argues you can track the spread of many movements in any society in the same way.
As any epidemiologist would look not only for the cause of the disease, Gladwell analyzes how these trends arise and how they become insinuated into the public consciousness. He identifies three groups of people who are essential to the creation and spread of such ideas : Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen and describes how they can cause ideas to spread.When connectors, mavens, and salesmen are all involved into an idea, it has a much higher chance of spreading. Vice versa, if you have an idea or a product that needs adoption, it might very well be valuable to identify and target these three types of people separately to push for a better adoption of what you are aiming to spread.

Gladwell looks into why certain ideas spread farther and faster than others do. He classes them according to how fast they spread and how effectively they hold on.The end result is a synthesis of current thinking ideas.
Why do major changes in any society so often happen suddenly and unexpectedly? Ideas, behavior, messages, and products,Gladwell argues, often spread like outbreaks of infectious disease. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a few fare-beaters and graffiti artists fuel a subway crime wave, or a satisfied customer fill the empty tables of a new restaurant. These are social epidemics, and the moment when they take off, when they reach their critical mass, is the Tipping Point.
Gladwell examines this idea through true stories of rapid change, one of the most central being that of Paul Revere and his famous 1775 midnight ride to Lexington, Massachusetts, warning villagers along the way of approaching British troops. A man named William Dawes did the same thing that night; both men rode to Lexington, but Revere set the countryside on fire with his warnings and Dawes did not.Paul Revere's ride ultimately set events in motion that led to the American Revolutionary War, and Dawes has been all but forgotten.
What was so different about the two men and their rides? What was unique about Paul Revere and his ride that tipped the struggle for American independence and forever changed the course of human history?

Gladwell takes that story and deftly draws a convincing narrative through a wide variety of other tales: the resurgence of Hush Puppie shoes in 1994; the Baltimore syphilis epidemic of 1995; the making of Sesame Street and its descendant, the children's show Blues Clues; the Bernard Goetz subway shooting in New York and a novel approach to crime that some credit to the rapid fall of crime rates in that city ten years later; cigarette addiction and advertising; an epidemic of teenage suicides in the South Pacific islands of Micronesia. In each, Gladwell attempts to isolate the fundamental qualities that turned a long-term status quo into a rapid and wide-ranging explosion of change, pointing convincingly to the common bonds that set each in motion.

If you're looking for hard academic evidence for the "Tipping Point" model or even an evenhanded treatment of opposing views - you won't find it here, but you will find a well researched book and a fairly thorough exploration of an interesting thesis. Likewise, readers interested in specific ways to create tipping points in their own endeavors won't find concrete instructions for doing so here - it's not a how-to book, instead leaving the practical questions of application up to the reader. In the end, "The Tipping Point" opens more doors than it closes.
The Tipping Point is a great book by an excellent writer who made his name as a writer at the Washington Post , and later with the New Yorker and even though this book deals with some serious ideas and novel ways of looking at the world, it does so in an very accessible way. It contains plenty to think about, and may provide new ways for addressing current issues.
"The Tipping Point" provides insights into social mechanisms, but also offers a lot of knowledge that can be transferred to marketing and business in general.It is extremely useful to anyone involved in marketing on any medium or trying to spread a new idea,or to anyone who seeks to advance understanding of the complex world around us.
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Sunday, April 1, 2007

I Feel Bad About My Neck


By Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron's book - "I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman" is made up of 16 autobiographical essays, some of which have appeared in The New Yorker, Vogue, and other venues is a direct look at life from Nora Ephron's perspective as a 60 some year old woman. She describes various dynamics regarding life as it progresses.Ephron includes a hilarious chapter on the concept of "maintenance". This refers to the confounding number of things that a woman is faced with adapting as time goes on : Waxing the mustache, dealing with keeping skin moisturized,hair dying,menopause, empty nests... She discusses openly how her relationships in her life have impacted her over the years - her thought on marriage is very telling : "marry someone you are comfortable divorcing."
In this book Ephron chronicles her life as an obsessed cook, passionate city dweller, and hapless parent. She recounts her anything-but-glamorous days as a White House intern during the Kennedy years : “I am probably the only young woman who ever worked in the Kennedy White House that the President did not make a pass at”, and shares how she fell in and out of love with Bill Clinton,from a distance, of course. But mostly she speaks frankly and uproariously about life as a woman of a certain age.
Nora Ephron who brought us When Harry Met Sally , Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail , Michael and Bewitched, and the author of best sellers Heartburn, Scribble Scribble, Wallflower at the Orgy and Crazy Salad, discusses everything—from how much she hates her purse to how much time she spends attempting to stop the clock: the hair dye, the treadmill, the lotions and creams that promise to slow the aging process but never do. Oh, and she can’t stand the way her neck looks. But her dermatologist tells her there’s no quick fix for that.
But,Ephron doesn't stop with necks, but takes on other afflictions and a few delights that mark this season of her life: her loathing of purses, the struggle to keep fit, the vagaries of parenting, and her favorite books.
These topics are laced with wry observations, told in an intimate style that makes Ephron seem like a close friend spilling details about her life.Nora Ephron paints quite a picture of lunching with her friends,all wealthy women in their 50s and 60s,as she looks around the table to realize they're all wearing turtlenecks. Or blouses with mandarin collars.
All in an attempt to hide their scrawny or saggy necks. This body part, Ephron concludes, is hopeless.Other beauty issues are more readily solved: gray hair can be colored, patchy skin can be covered with makeup, and wrinkled faces given chemical treatments, but short of plastic surgery, necks are "doomed." She's skewering the obsession with appearances while squeezing comic mileage out of the situation.
"Our faces are lies and our necks are the truth"..."You have to cut a redwood tree open to see how old it is, but you wouldn't have to if it had a neck",Nora Ephron writes.
Graying hair is another age marker, and hair dye, Ephron concludes, is the most powerful weapon women have against the youth culture. She makes a persuasive case that hair dye has enabled women to feel comfortable about remaining in the workforce far longer than they otherwise might.
Most women will love the essay about her purse. She may "feel bad" about her neck, but she "hates" her purse. She's writing here for women "who understand that their purses are reflections of negligent housekeeping, hopeless disorganization, a chronic inability to throw anything away" and who aren't wildly successful at changing at the right time from a winter purse to a summer one. Her list of permanent purse contents includes loose Tic-Tacs, lipsticks with no covers, leaky ballpoint pens and crumpled tissues that might have been used but equally well might not have been.
Nora Ephron is always good for an amusing line, a wry smile, and sometimes an abashed grin of recognition as she homes in on one of our own dubious obsessions.
The honest truth is that it's sad to be over sixty," concludes Nora Ephron in her sparkling new book about aging.But,while signs of mortality proliferate, Ephron offers a rebuttal of consequence: an intelligent, alert, entertaining perspective.
This book is sometimes funny, and at times melancholy. It starts out seeming like it's going to be a series of humor columns and turns into a nice reflective book about life, parenthood, aging and being a woman.
It doesn't matter what age you are, you will love this book.Nora Ephron's perspective as an admittedly high-maintenance, New York-dwelling, successful screenwriter will keep you entertained."I Feel Bad About My Neck" is a book of wisdom, advice, and laugh-out-loud moments, a scrumptious, irresistible treat.
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Friday, March 30, 2007

Shopaholic & Baby


By Sophie Kinsella

Sophie Kinsella's chick-lit heroine is back.Now married, pregnant and working as the head personal shopper for a brand-new London boutique.For the uninitiated, the Shopaholic in question is Becky Bloomwood.She is not riddled with insecurities and neuroses but eternally chirpy, optimistic and cheerful. She has a slight spending problem, but as she gets conveniently married to a very rich man earlier on in the cycle, she never gets into real financial trouble and can indulge in her consumerist binges to her heart content. She is, basically, a shallow, celebrity and fashion obsessed idiot, and an insufferably girlie one at that, but she's also full of life, endearing, good-hearted, upbeat and resourceful. Oh,yes,she doesn't worry about being fat. She is the kind of person that many readers might wish was their friend, but even if you think you wouldn't be able to stand her for 10 minutes in real life, it can be pure fun reading about her.
Sophie Kinsella has created a character who at first seems ditzy, shallow and self-centered, but who evolves into a resourceful, sensitive friend, wife and mother. Her antics are laugh-out-loud funny and predictably unpredictable. After weepingly writing 17 pages of angst to her "unfaithful" husband, she suddenly decides that she can forgive him if he agrees to meet her at the top of a tall tower at midnight. Since Becky has trouble staying awake, she scratches out midnight and substitutes 6 p.m. Not being aware of any tall towers in London, she decides the top of the OXO building will be perfect for a romantic rendezvous.
This book is fun, and it's a perfect escape from all the serious concerns of real life. Becky is like a 21st-century Lucille Ball, full of comical, hair-brained ideas that sound impossible to everyone but her.
Sophie Kinsella writes well, with fluency and never losing the naturalness of her narrator, an ear for dialogue and a good sense of comedy, with Becky's parents, half-sister Jess and posh friend Suze prime secondary subjects for chuckles of recognition. But apart from that all, her books are refreshingly unpretentious: they are positive and kind, they don't pretend to deal with any kind of "issues" of either social or emotional kind. There is no real evil and no real heartbreak in them, there is no violence, and no sex. Shopaholic novels are pure, unadulterated, frothy entertainment with a dose of comedy of manners thrown in, and they do what they do very well indeed.
Madeleine Wickham (born 12 December 1968) is a bestselling British author under her pseudonym, Sophie Kinsella. Educated at New College, Oxford, she worked as a financial journalist before turning to fiction. She is best known for writing a popular series of chick-lit novels.
In this latest installment of the Shopaholic franchise , the commercially insatiable Becky Bloomwood shops for two in every upscale baby shop and catalogue in London, snags a celebrity ob/gyn and leverages a pair of the moment's 'most coveted' boots to negotiate a home purchase.
Complicating an otherwise uneventful pregnancy, Becky Bloomwood suspects her husband is having an affair with her hot doc,who also happens to be his ex-girlfriend,and she hires a gumshoe with predictable madcap results. For chick-lit lovers with babies of their own, or for those who covet one, Sophie Kinsella mines a rich vein by tweaking 21st-century glossy mag obsessions: from sonograms to the hottest baby strollers to tricked-out birthing rooms. Kinsella's ode to baby blues is both sly and slapstick.
This book might be the best one yet in the series! Becky Bloomwood preparing for motherhood is hilarious. You can picture her doing all the crazy things and you will laugh out loud.
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In an Instant


By Lee Woodruff, Bob Woodruff

In January 2006,in Iraq, when the armored vehicle Bob Woodruff was riding in was struck by an IED.Woodruff was gravely injured by the shrapnel that had pierced his brain, battled pneumonia, sepsis, and more. With part of his skull removed, his wife Lee recalled that ''his brain was still swollen out of his head like a giant tumor.''
There may be no end of treatment for Bob Woodruff, who still undergoes cognitive therapy. As his wife Lee says, things that once seemed small now loom large: the first time her husband could figure a tip, the first time he got on an airplane himself. And yet he's one of the lucky ones, and not only that he survived the attack.
It's hard to be too critical of a book like this. Bob Woodruff and his wife went through a horrendous experience, and they deserve kudos for writing with honesty.
In an Instant is the frank and compelling account of how Bob and Lee’s lives came together, were blown apart, and then were miraculously put together again–and how they persevered, with grit but also with humor, through intense trauma and fear. Here are Lee’s heartfelt memories of their courtship, their travels as Bob left a law practice behind and pursued his news career and Lee her freelance business, the births of her children and the challenges of motherhood.
Bob Woodruff in turn recalls the moment he caught the journalism “bug” while covering Tiananmen Square for CBS News, his love of overseas assignments and his guilt about long separations from his family, and his pride at attaining the brass ring of television news–being chosen to fill the seat of the late Peter Jennings.
In this book , for the first time, the Woodruffs reveal the agonizing details of Bob’s terrible injuries and his remarkable recovery. We learn that Bob’s return home was not an end to the journey but the first step into a future they have learned not to fear but to be grateful for.
In an Instant is much more than the dual memoir of love and courage. It is an important, wise, and inspiring guide to coping with tragedy and an extraordinary drama of marriage, family, war, and nation.
In an Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing is the story of a brave and courageous family. Bob Woodruff was determined to overcome his injury and return to a normal life. Lee endured a very painful and heartwrenching period from the moment she learned of Bob's wound. The children, reflecting the love and caring they had received from their parents up to that point, also endured much as their father was recovering and their mother was dividing her time between them and supporting Bob. In these days of disfunctional families, it is truly an inspirational experience to read this story of a very functional and loving family.

A percentage of the proceeds from this book will be donated to the Bob Woodruff Family Fund for Traumatic Brain Injury.

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Thursday, March 29, 2007

Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution


By Robert C. Atkins

Dr. Robert C. Atkins has given his popular diet plan a makeover, complete with new recipes, updated scientific information, and a more integrative approach to weight loss and total health. With the medical community beginning to recognize the validity of the Atkins approach,which maintains that excessive carbohydrates, not fat, are the real culprits in weight gain,there has never been a better time to check out the diet revolution pioneered by Dr. Robert C. Atkins whose other bestsellers include Dr. Atkins’ New Carbohydrate Gram Counter and Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Cookbook.
Designed to catapult your body into a state of fat meltdown, Dr. Atkins's diet has taken America by storm. It targets insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels. The bodies of most overeaters are continually in a state of hyperinsulinism; their bodies are so adept at releasing insulin to help convert excess carbohydrates to fat that there's always too much of the hormone circulating through the body. This puts the body into a bind; it always wants to store fat. Even when people with hyperinsulinism try to lose weight,especially when they cut fat but increase carbohydrate consumption,their efforts will fail. That is why Dr. Atkins refers to insulin as "the fat-producing hormone."
Dr. Atkins's diet is extremely low in carbohydrates, which helps to regulate insulin production and decrease circulating insulin; less insulin soon results in less fat storage and fewer food cravings. The diet is far from torturous.Those who've tried it attest that hunger is not a part of this plan. Ninety percent of Dr. Atkins's patients,more than 25,000 of them,have experienced dramatic weight loss. The book includes recipes for such luscious, low-carb dishes as lobster soup, zabaglione, sea bass, and blueberry ice cream, and even includes a carbohydrate gram counter and menus.
The first several chapters of the book explain the relationship between Carbohydrates and fat (weight) gain. It also discusses the blood sugar and carbohydrate connection. The book then goes on to explain what will happen to your body as you follow the plan. About how your body will go into something called "ketosis".To quote from the book : "ketosis" is: "a metabolic advantage. Briefly, the body naturally turns to fat for fuel when carbohydrate isn't available. When a lot of fat is burned, some of the fat fragments - ketones - get excreted to preserve the body's acid-base balance (because ketones are acid), and this called "ketosis." The book explains exactly how long it will take for your body to go into ketosis, and what you will be experiencing as your body starts to begin to experience ketosis. It also explains how to stay in ketosis, and what to do if you temporarily take yourself out of it. .
Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution also recommends several supplements that you should take along with the diet.The book goes into more detail about the connection between carbohydrates, ketosis, blood sugar, and the health benefits of the low carbohydrate diet, and how it can improve your health over all and help you to keep control over several different diseases including diabetes; it also goes in to some detail about the carbohydrate/insulin connection.
Dr. Robert C. Atkins contends that weight gain has little to do with fat intake; and, he will demonstrate "how much fat you can burn off, while eating liberally, even luxuriously.He encourages dieters to revel in traditional sources of protein like red meat, and to eat eggs and bacon for breakfast. Rapid weight loss, he promises, will be achieved through his 14-day "induction" diet, in which almost all carbohydrates are virtually banned from the table, forcing the body to go into a fat-burning metabolic state called ketosis. Dr.Atkins still urges broad-based vitamin supplements to take up any nutritional slack. So what's changed in 20 years? Atkins says he now is more interested in "complete wellness" than in dropping pounds quickly; he stresses that the "induction" is not to be considered a lifetime regimen unless, of course, the dieter has particularly stubborn "metabolic resistance." Readers of his last book may notice some defensiveness,two decades of criticism clearly have taken their toll. Nonetheless, there is enough of the old Atkins to make this the most arrogant diet book to appear in a long while. " I hope to amaze you ," he writes, " as I amazed millions of dieters in the past ."
He repeats his controversial, questionably valid premise that the elimination of carbohydrates from the diet will result in weight loss, good health, and euphoria. Contrary to current thinking, Dr. Robert C. Atkins promotes a diet of protein and fat in four stages: induction, ongoing weight loss, premaintenance, and maintenance. Case histories document his achievementsIn this book there are updated meals that are shown how to prepare. and is broken down into many pages of vital information on how to stay on the diet.
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The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography


(Oprah's Book Club)
By Sidney Poitier

Sidney Poitier,The Oscar-winning actor and humanitarian offers an intimate look at his journey from a childhood of poverty to cinematic success.This autobiography explores his rich and inspiring life, the lessons he’s learned and his commitment to maintaining personal ethics and artistic integrity in the face of racism.Sidney Poitier is known worldwide for sensitive and powerful portrayals in socially charged films. In his magnificently crafted life story, you can't help but feel moved by his narrative. It is joy to read Poitier's candid tale. Sydney Poitier looks back at his pioneering life and career, without any sense of superiority. Using his genuine humility, he shares the lessons learned along the way.
His body of work is arguably the most morally significant in cinematic history, and the power and influence of that work are indicative of the character of the man behind the many storied roles. Sidney Poitier here explores these elements of character and personal values to take his own measure as a man, as a husband and a father, and as an actor.
Poitier credits his parents and his childhood on tiny Cat Island in the Bahamas for equipping him with the unflinching sense of right and wrong and of self-worth that he has never surrendered and that have dramatically shaped his world. "In the kind of place where I grew up," recalls Poitier, "what's coming at you is the sound of the sea and the smell of the wind and momma's voice and the voice of your dad and the craziness of your brothers and sisters...and that's it." Without television, radio, and material distractions to obscure what matters most, he could enjoy the simple things, endure the long commitments, and find true meaning in his life.
Poitier was uncompromising as he pursued a personal and public life that would honor his upbringing and the invaluable legacy of his parents. Just a few years after his introduction to indoor plumbing and the automobile, Sidney Poitier broke racial barrier after racial barrier in the United States to launch a pioneering acting career. Committed to the notion that what one does for a living articulates to who one is, Poitier played only forceful and affecting characters who said something positive, useful, and lasting about the human condition.
Here is Poitier's own introspective look at what has informed his performances and his life. Poitier explores the nature of sacrifice and commitment, price and humility, rage and forgiveness, and paying the price for artistic integrity. What emerges is a picture of a man in the face of limits,his own and the world's. A triumph of the spirit, The Measure of a Man captures the essential Sidney Poitier.
In this book Sidney Poitier freely admits his faults and owns up to his strengths, which extend from his upbringing.
"I have no wish to play the pontificating fool, pretending that I've suddenly come up with the answers to all life's questions. Quite that contrary, I began this book as an exploration, an exercise in self-questing. In other words, I wanted to find out, as I looked back at a long and complicated life, with many twists and turns, how well I've done at measuring up to the values I myself have set." —Sidney Poitier
Sidney Poitier was the first African American actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his outstanding performance in Lilies of the Field in 1963.He has starred in over forty films, directed nine, and written four. His landmark films include The Defiant Ones , A Patch of Blue , Guess Who's Coming to Dinner , In the Heat of the Night and To Sir, With Love. Among his many accolades, he has recently been selected as the thirty-sixth recipient of the Screen Actors Guild's highest honor, the Life Achievement Award for an outstanding career and humanitarian accomplishment.
Born in the Bahamas in 1927, young Sidney Poitier encountered few white people and never "learned" to feel inferior. When his tomato-farmer parents lost their livelihood due to a Florida embargo, Poitier's family moved to the United States of America, staying first in Miami, and eventually moving to Harlem, where his father sold cigars and his mother broke rocks into gravel. His parents' hard-working ethic and his own sense of self-worth, mixed with anger at the prevalent racism and segregation of the period, made Poitier determined to succeed despite the forces arrayed against him. Throughout the 1950s and '60s, he continually broke down racial barriers, and fought to depict African American men in interesting roles with pride, dignity, and charm. The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography, his second volume of autobiography, an Oprah's Book Club selection in 2007, powerfully describes all the challenges Poitier faced, and how the teaching of his parents and his spiritual faith helped him overcome and thrive.
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Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Happy Feet


Happy Feet (2006)
Directed by George Miller

Happy Feet is an animated wonder about a penguin named Mumble who can't sing, but can dance up a storm. George Miller, the driving force behind the Babe (and Mad Max) movies, takes another creative step in family entertainment with this big, beautiful, music-fueled film. From his first moment alive, Mumble (voiced Elijah Wood) feels the beat and can't stop dancing. Unfortunatly, emperor penguins are all about finding their own heart song, and dancing youngste. Luckily, he bumps into little blue penguins, a Spanish-infused group (led by Robin Williams) and begins a series of adventures. Miller has an exceptional variety of entertainment, Busby Berkley musical numbers, amusement park thrills, exciting chase sequences, and even an environmental message that doesn't weigh you down. Best of all, you don't know where the movie is going in the last act, a rare occurrence these days in family entrainment. A fusion of rock songs, mashed up and otherwise are featured; this movie is as much a musical as a comedy. Mumble's solo dance to a new version of Stevie Wonder's "I Wish" by Fantasia, Patti and Yolanda may be the most joyful moment on camera in 2006.
In the great nation of Emperor Penguins, deep in Antarctica, you’re nobody unless you can sing,which is unfortunate for Mumble, who is the worst singer in the world. He is born dancing to his own tune tap dancing. Though Mumble’s mom (Norma Jean) thinks this little habit is cute, his dad, Memphis, says it “just ain’t penguin.” Besides, they both know that, without a Heartsong, Mumble may never find true love.But, his one friend, Gloria, happens to be the best singer around. Mumble and Gloria have a connection from the moment they hatch, but she struggles with his strange “hippity- hoppity” ways. Mumble is just too different,especially for Noah the Elder, the stern leader of Emperor Land, who ultimately casts him out of the community. Away from home for the first time, Mumble meets a posse of decidedly un-Emperor-like penguins--the Adelie Amigos. Led by Ramon, the Adelies instantly embrace Mumble’s cool dance moves and invite him to party with them. In Adelie Land, Mumble seeks the counsel of Lovelace the Guru, a crazy-feathered Rockhopper penguin who will answer any of life’s questions for the price of a pebble. Together with Lovelace and the Amigos, Mumble sets out across vast landscapes and, after some epic encounters, proves that by being true to yourself, you can make all the difference in the world.
Happy Feet was also meant to be a "message" film, and those can always be tricky. There are two messages here - taking care of the environment and not casting out those that are different - and yet they're handled in a truly cool way. Yes, the uberconservatives may get in a bit of a snit when they see the forces against Mumbles are cast to appear like mean-spirited religious zealots.However this is a very interesting plotpoint. Outcasts sometimes feel just that way , beat on and thrown out simply because they're running against the popular tide. And the environmental point is handled in a way non-humans would look upon it. Humans really aren't being necessarily "mean" in how they act toward animals."Humans" may be just clueless to the harm they're doing.
A top-notch voice cast helps bring this off. Elijah Wood may yet be one of the most overlooked actors in Hollywood because he's able to bring off a tender, desperate Mumbles with only his voice.If you don't give a damn about this Earth we are living on or Wildlife and/or the destruction of their habitat,maybe you should go live on another planet! It's never too early to start teaching kid's to preserve instead of trashing the world we live in.
George Miller turns such a simple throw-pillow of a plot into a vivid epic, but after doing that the movie should have wound down and gotten back in touch with the smaller moments that he used to build towards that large-scale journey the movie becomes.
The movie includes themes of humans intruding on natural habitats but avoids the heavy-duty questions of how to solve the problem. Some of the chase sequences and elephant seal scenes might be scary for younger kids. Also, racial stereotypes come into play: Latin-inspired penguins are caricatured as party-loving animals, and an African-American-type penguin comes across as an oversexed, fundamentalist preacher. Still, the movie's themes of social acceptance and embracing your own uniqueness shine through.
Voice acting is strong. Elijah Wood brings an earnestness to his portrayal of Mumbles, while Brittany Murphy is enticing as his love interest Gloria. Hugh Jackman is nearly unrecognizable as the Elvis-inspired Memphis, while Nicole Kidman brings warmth to her Norma Jean. Hugo Weaving brings menace to the intractable leader of the penguins, Noah. And Robin Williams is much more restrained than normal. He's never in a position where he overwhelms the film with one of his three voices.
We don't get to see often enough Hugh Jackman's verstility with accents, and here we are hearing him do a cross between Curly from "Oklahoma" and Elvis without it seeming forced or artificial. There are really too many performances to list, and they're all first rate.The tapdancing too is great. We only see a cartoonish replication of Savion Glover's moves, but he really sends off on sound as well. A carryover from his days on "Stomp."
George Miller and his crew spent four years working on the film; the results are, quite simply, stunning.This is an excellent animated movie, one with great performances and a vision so strong that it deserves to be mentioned right up there with the best of the computer animated medium.Happy Feet is one of the best children's films of the past 20 years.
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Law of Attraction


Law of Attraction: The Science of Attracting of More of What You Want and Less of What You Don't Want
By Michael Losier

The Law of Attraction by Michael Losier is one of those rare books that can instantly change your life.What is the Law of Attraction?The Law of Atraction states: "I attract to my life whatever I give my energy, focus, and attention to, whether wanted or unwanted". Everything in the world is made up of energy which vibrates at a certain level. When someone has "bad vibes", they are sending off negative energy.According to Michael Losier The Law of Attraction responds to whatever vibration you are offering, by giving you more of what you are vibrating. In our bodies, our "vibration" is translated as feelings. When we feel enthusiastic, loving, confident, or content, we are vibrating positively. When we feel sad, stressed, angry ,we are vibrating negatively. This is why viewing negative events causes us to feel badly. Likewise, witnessing beauty or acts of kindess causes us to feel good.
We "create our own reality". Regardless of whether or not we are doing it intentionally, we draw circumstances and people towards us that match our feelings. We are constantly thinking thoughts, and those thoughts produce feelings (vibration). The Law of Attraction teaches us how to deliberately attract more of what we want as opposed to unconsciously attracting what we don't.
What Michael Losier shows us is that how we feel about something and what we focus upon attracts situations and people with matching vibration. He then gives us tools to raise our vibration, and attract our ideal situation which is exciting! The three-step formula for deliberate attraction is:Identify your desire,Raise your vibration,Allow it.The instructions are clear and simple, and can be performed quickly.Michael Losier provides two case studies, and guides you through the three-step process with worksheets. There is even a webpage listed in the book where you can download additional worksheets.
Michael Losier is an N.L.P. Practitioner and a Law of Attraction Coach and Practitioner.He facilitates a number of in-person Law of Attraction seminars as well as teleseminars to a worldwide audience.Michael assists and supports people so they can understand and practice the art of Deliberate Attraction so they can have more of what they want in their lives.
Michael Losier makes an important point. While your thoughts and feelings are both creative forces in your life, feelings affect your energy field to an even greater degree than what you are thinking. On the one hand, what you think and believe is a measure of your self-esteem, past experience, and what you are choosing to give attention to. On the other hand, feelings set the tone for what you receive from the universal energy field. When you feel insufficient or not smart enough or physically attractive,it limits your results accordingly. Likewise, if you don't think something is possible, you are not going to recognize an opportunity when it comes.
So what do you do when you catch yourself in conversation saying don't, not, or no? "Simply ask yourself, 'So what do I want?'" says Michael. "At first you'll need to remember to do this, but eventually it will become a new habit. It's a great way to stop the cycle of complaining from negative friends or family. Bring to mind somebody in your life who tends to dump all their problems on you. Next time you hear them go on and on about their problems, simply ask them 'So what do you want?' As they start to describe what they want, their words will change and so will their vibration. You won't feel their negativity anymore. It's a fact that you can't hold two vibrations at the same time." You make a difference.
Michael Losier has managed to distill into a text a practical explanation of the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics, and a simple three-step process for applying these laws in everyday life. With a brief nod to the underlying theory of quantum physics, and with source credit to new-age gurus Esther and Jerry Hicks of Abraham-Hicks Publications,Michael Losier proceeds to offer an extremely simple, clear approach to creating the ideal life through deliberate use of the natural Law of Attraction. His step-by-step process for 1) gaining clarity through contrast, 2) creating desire statements and 3) eliminating doubt, are refreshingly practical, easy to understand and easy to follow.
The Law of Attraction is not a new concept - which is acknowledged by the author, but this book lays it down in practical, clear, concise terms and helps you put it into action immediately.If your life feels as if it has turned south it's time to pick up this book.
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The Road


The Road (Oprah's Book Club)
By Cormac McCarthy

In this book Cormac Mccarthy has given us a glimpse of a post-apocalyptic world none of us want to see or visit or even think about it. It is desolate, singulatory, stark, bleak; all of these words and more are needed to describe a world after a nuclear explosion. We are left to imagine the events, the place, and the time. All we have are these two souls, dad and son, no names. They are moving from one place to another to get to the coast, why, we do not know, are left to wonder. Along the way Cormac Mccarthy describes the world we never want to see. Smoldering even after a few years, everything black and stripped of any semblance. Not many people, and those they meet, they are afraid of. Looters, and murderers and eaters of flesh.
The story follows a father and son as the they wander, stagger, and grope their way through a burned over America. Little moves within this incinerated landscape that is smothered in ash driven by a cold wind. The snow is grey. Rivers run thickly clogged with ash and soot. The trees are black skeletons. The pair is heading for the Eastern coast with little hope of finding anything. They have nothing save a pistol and a handful of bullets to defend themselves against the bands of ravenous ghouls who maraud the roads and heat-buckled Interstates like bizarre, merciless highwaymen. And they have the ragged clothes they’re wearing and a cart of scavenged food. And they have themselves.
These two souls, father and son, the two evidences that love can keep you going, can keep you on the right path, and can keep you "One of the good guys". There is not much to keep you going or to keep you safe. Death, no food, no shelter, no clothing, harsh and cold environment, only your wits, and then it is hard to keep them together. A harsh and cold path and if it is what we have to face, Cormac Mccarthy has given us the most beautiful prose and surreal writing,with an economy of words that is beautiful in its execution.
The vulnerable cultural references for this daring scenario obviously come from science fiction. But what propels The Road far beyond its progenitors are the diverted poetic heights of McCarthy's late-English prose; the simple declamation and plainsong of his rendered dialect, as perfect as early Hemingway; and the adamantine surety and utter aptness of every chiselled description.
McCarthy carves this world in a harsh, stark lyricism reserved for those who speak unflinching prophecy. Both the father and son are surrounded by a nightmare and are frightened by others. They are starving, always cautiously alert, only having a grocery cart with a few blankets and a gun with two bullets, either to protect against the cannibalistic humanity following their tracks or for the father to finish their lives before despair consumes them both.
As they journey to the coast in search of something, the father tells the boy it is better to have nightmares because when you start dreaming, you know the end is near. McCarthy allows the reader to dream for them, striving on with them until a conclusion that whispers, under the pain and futility, of a sovereignty that is older than the destruction ever looming in the world.
Cormac McCarthy is one of the best American writers authoring nine novels including "Suttree", "Cities of the Plain" and "No Country for Old Men".The country in all of his books is no place for old men or those lacking a mad sense of courage. He’s won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Award. His author photo depicts an individual of stern background who’s perhaps seen more than he wanted. The ever-popular eternity stare is in evidence.
But there seems to be a glimmer of hope or optimism shining faintly in the wind-blown grimness. All along the journey to the coast, despite the horrors and deprivations the father and son encounter, the two happen upon caches of abundance : canned meats, fruits, vegetables, clean water in a cistern, decent clothing. This may not seem like much, but the finds shimmer like gold in the stygian atmosphere. It is remarkable that McCarthy pulls this off, a testament to his skill, while never ceasing in his relentless portrayal of hopelessness. The Road is a novel of transforming power and formal risk. Abandoning gruff but profound male camaraderie, McCarthy instead sounds the limits of imaginable love and despair between a diligent father and his timid young son, "each other's world entire". The initial experience of the novel is sobering and oppressive, its final effect is emotionally shattering.
Camus wrote that the world is ugly and cruel, but it is only by adding to that ugliness and cruelty that we sin most gravely. The Road affirms belief in the tender pricelessness of the here and now. In creating an exquisite nightmare, it does not add to the cruelty and ugliness of our times,it warns us all how much we have to lose. Beauty and goodness are here aplenty and we should think about them. While we can.
This is all a long way of getting around to the fact that the recently quite-productive Cormac McCarthy has written a new novel, The Road, which is set in a post-apocalyptic environment, and it’s as though he was made for it. The book is not only an instant classic of its type, it is very close to being the novel of the year.Highly recommended.

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007

The Secret


The Secret
By Rhonda Byrne
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- The Australian author of The Secret, Rhonda Byrne, introduces the book by admitting, "A year ago, my life had collapsed around me". Through searching for answers in a variety of books new and old, Rhonda Byrne began to trace what she believed was a common thread in them all. She dubbed it the "Great Secret—The Secret to Life".It is a motivational self-help book of some kind and the synopsis referred to physicists, old oral traditions, religions, poetry and philosophy. The essence of The Secret is "the law of attraction." According to Rhonda Byrne and the twenty-nine co-contributors, everything in the Universe vibrates on a particular frequency. When you think in harmony with the frequency of something, you attract it to you. If you think about wealth, you will receive wealth. If you think instead about your debt, you will receive more debt. You attract what you think about; your thoughts determine your destiny.

Rhonda Byrne restates the law of attraction in different ways: "Nothing,good or bad,can come into your experience unless you summon it through persistent thoughts"."Your thoughts are the primary cause of everything". "Your current reality or your current life is a result of the thoughts you have been thinking". "This is The Secret to everything,the secret to unlimited joy, health, money, relationships, love, youth: everything you have ever wanted.
Byrne promises with ironclad certainty: "There isn't a single thing that you cannot do with this knowledge. The Secret can give you whatever you want" ... "you will come to know how you can have, be, or do anything you want".

This book gives hope for what many have been waiting for a long time - a shift in the way the world thinks. Fragments of a Great Secret have been found in the oral traditions, in literature, in religions and philosophies throughout the World and centuries.Now,for the first time, all the pieces of The Secret come together in an incredible revelation that seems to be life-transforming for all who experience it.
The secret is really no secret, it is a great presentation of what we were taught since we were children. To have gratitude, to be thankful, to bless everything, to be positive.
In this book, you'll learn how to use The Secret in every aspect of your life : money, health, relationships, happiness, and in every interaction you have in the world. You'll begin to understand the hidden power that's within you.

The Secret contains wisdom from modern-day teachers men and women who have used it to achieve health, wealth, and happiness. By applying the knowledge of The Secret, they bring to light compelling stories of eradicating disease, acquiring wealth, overcoming obstacles, and achieving what many would regard as impossible.
Rhonda Byrne was able to bring together this life-changing information so masterfully. She first did it for the movie of the same name that she produced, which has been a phenomenon in its own right. She then added, in only ones month's time, incredible additional content to the transcript of the film that brings even more clarity to the reader. This is a book that people from all walks of life can read and then understand the concept of The Secret. It allows you to apply it to your life.People of all ages are reporting miraculous stories of positive changes as a result. Rhonda Byrne is dedicated to maintaining the integrity of The Secret and to making sure that now,the whole world knows about it.

Towards the end of 2004, Rhonda Byrne discovered a secret - "the secret laws and principles of the universe",and soon her life was transformed, as she began to put into practice what she had learned. It seemed to Rhonda that almost no one knew the things that she had discovered, even though the concepts could be found in almost every religion and field of human endeavor throughout history. And in that moment her greatest wish, and mission, was to share this knowledge with the world.

Rhonda began to see that her entire life - everything she had ever done - had been quietly and steadily moving her towards the most perfect place for her to be able to fulfill her wish. And to fulfill it on the grandest possible scale! She had gone from working as a producer at the Nine Network in Melbourne, Australia, to starting her own television production company, Prime Time Productions, in 1994. And after ten years of creating internationally successful shows, Rhonda Byrne was ready to take Prime Time Productions in a direction that fulfilled people rather than just entertained them.
On that spring day in 2004, when a book called "The Science of Getting Rich" was put into her hands, and Rhonda's whole life suddenly pulled into spectacular focus, she knew exactly what her mission was to become. She was going to take this knowledge to the world. She was going to make a movie to carry joy to every corner of the Earth. And so the great journey that was The Secret began.
In early 2005, when The Secret was simply a name and a momentous vision, Prime Time Productions was made up of Rhonda, Producer Paul Harrington, and Director Drew Heriot. For eight weeks Rhonda intensively taught everything she had learned about The Secret to Paul and Drew.

One of Rhonda's initial intentions for the creation of the show was that Prime Time Productions would use The Secret to make The Secret,that it would be an effortless, joyful journey as they attracted everything and everyone that was needed to fulfill the vision. And right when the company was ready to begin production the perfect people to make The Secret began to appear.
Overall, the abdication of reason is so absolute that it takes a while to actually believe it can be really happening.What The Secret advises is really positive thinking, affirmations, visualisation of goals; ideas made mainstream by treatment techniques, that one's attitude and expectations often result in self-fulfilling prophecies. That fear and lack of self-confidence can block fulfilment. That day-to-day, others sometimes treat us the way we think we deserve to be treated. That generally, we tend to be more happy and more successful if we have positive outlook and believe things are possible.
THE SECRET is a way of thinking that can transform the lives of all and lead to a new reality where each is free to follows one's own dream. It attacks no one.It reveals secrets long held hidden in the initiation rights of mysterious societies. It unlocks the parables of great spiritual avatars. It brings science to the thin line that it has been unwilling cross with regards to the power of thought.

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