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8 Weeks to Optimum Health
A Proven Program for Taking Full
Advantage of
Your Body's Natural Healing Power
by Andrew Weil, M.D.
Book
Description
In Eight Weeks to Optimum Health, Dr. Andrew Weil translates the
brilliant insights and discoveries he outlined in his acclaimed
bestseller, Spontaneous Healing, into a practical plan of action: a
week-by-week, step-by-step program for enhancing and protecting
present and lifelong health. The Eight-Week Program sets up a
foundation for healthy living that will keep your body's natural
healing system in peak working order. With clearly defined and
authoritatively informed recommendations, Dr. Weil explains how to
¸ Build a lifestyle that protects you from premature
illness and disability
¸ Fine-tune your current eating habits so that your diet is more
nutritious
¸ Walk and stretch in regimens that satisfy weekly exercise
requirements
¸ Safeguard your healing system by adding four antioxidant
supplements--vitamin C and E, selenium, and mixed carotenes--to your
diet
¸ Incorporate five basic breathing exercises for greater relaxation
and energy
¸ Benefit from visualization, overcome sleeping problems, and test
and filter your water supply
¸ Make art, music, and the natural world more important parts of
your life
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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
A Year of Food Life
by Barbara
Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp
From Bookmarks Magazine
In this very topical memoir, Kingsolver has penned a "heroic story"
that demonstrates how "growing your own fruits and vegetables, with
people you love, can be as rewarding an experience as any on the
face of the earth" (San
Francisco Chronicle).
It also may mark the first time fresh asparagus has been documented
with such rapture. The author's passion and narrative prowess make
Animal an entertaining, often page-turning read. Her biologist
husband Steven offers pithy sidebars about the politics of
sustainable agriculture, as well as advice on how to make a change
at home. Eldest daughter Camille supplies simple, nutritious
recipes. Their combined efforts resulted in nearly universal praise
from the critics.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson
Media, Inc. |
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Enduring Seeds
Native
American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conservation
by
Gary Paul Nabhan (Author)
In
this collection of seven essays, Reid, a mountaineer for 25 yearsfor
25 years, or he's 25 years old? , aims high: it is the soul of the
climber at timberline that holds his interest. Reid believes we can
find our way "home," back to our roots, by visiting mountains and
wilderness. Blending facts and his emotions,, the author beautifully
and passionately describes his experiences on the slopes and the
residue from each. In the Tetons, he glimpsed the affinity between
love and death. Atop the sacred Navaho peak Tsoodzi, he underwent
spiritual reawakening. In the Catskills, mountain became educator.
Retracing part of the 1833 trail of ol' Joe Walker's party in the
Sierras, Reid discovered the joy of perseverance, which the group
found on "gazing at last on the great blue dream of the Pacific." A
better guide than Reid would be hard to find. (May)per MS, but May
on drop sheet/should have changed date on mss; sorry; may it is
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.d |
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Energy
Medicine
The Scientific Basis of Bioenergy Therapies
Forward
by Candace, Ph.D. Pert
Book Description
There is growing interest world wide in the field of mind-body
medicine and the effect which the natural "energy forces" within the
body play in the maintenance of normal health and wellbeing. This in
turn has led to interest in how these energies or forces may be
channelled to assist in healing and restoration to health. This
book, written by a well known scientist with a degree in biophysics
and a PhD in biology, brings together for the first time evidence
from a wide range of disciplines which is beginning to provide an
acceptable explanation for the energetic exchanges that take place
in all therapies. |

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Fast Food
Nation
by Eric Schlosser
From Booklist
Everyone frets about the nutritional implications of excessive
dining at America's fast-food emporia, but few grasp the
significance of how fast-food restaurants have fundamentally changed
the way Americans eat. Schlosser documents the effects of fast food
on America's economy, its youth culture, and allied industries, such
as meatpacking, that serve this vast food production empire.
Starting with a young woman who makes minimum wage working at a
Colorado fast-food restaurant, Schlosser relates the oft-told story
of Ray Kroc's founding of McDonald's. The author also tells about
the development of the franchise method of business ownership and
the health and nutrition implications of fast-food consumption. In a
striking chapter, Schlosser gives a glimpse into the little-known
world of chemically engineered flavorings, both natural and
artificial. The coming together of so many diverse social,
scientific, and economic trends in a single industry makes this book
a relevant, compelling read and a cautionary tale of the many risks
generated by this ubiquitous industry. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to
the Hardcover edition.
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Food Not Lawns
How to Turn Your Yard
into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community
by Heather C. Flores
From Publishers Weekly
For Flores, "practicing ecological living is a deeply subversive
act," and while most gardening books do not include warnings that
COINTELPRO "can and will...rape you," it is only because most
gardening books do not encourage "guerilla gardening" after
describing the basics of garden planning and pruning. More advanced
topics range from integrating barnyard birds into a garden to
getting more mileage out of the home water cycle to the benefits of
a balanced insect population. The illustrations are amusing as well
as helpful, and though the index is not extensive, the book,
overall, is a much better read than the average gardening book, both
in terms of range and entertainment value.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier
Inc. All rights reserved. |
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In
Defense of Food
An
Eater's Manifesto
by Michael Pollan (Author)
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In his hugely influential treatise The Omnivore's
Dilemma, Pollan traced a direct line between the
industrialization of our food supply and the degradation of the
environment. His new book takes up where the previous work left off.
Examining the question of what to eat from the perspective of
health, this powerfully argued, thoroughly researched and elegant
manifesto cuts straight to the chase with a maxim that is
deceptively simple: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. But as
Pollan explains, food in a country that is driven by a thirty-two
billion-dollar marketing machine is both a loaded term and, in its
purest sense, a holy grail. The first section of his three-part
essay refutes the authority of the diet bullies, pointing up the
confluence of interests among manufacturers of processed foods,
marketers and nutritional scientists—a cabal whose nutritional
advice has given rise to a notably unhealthy preoccupation with
nutrition and diet and the idea of eating healthily. The second
portion vivisects the Western diet, questioning, among other sacred
cows, the idea that dietary fat leads to chronic illness. A writer
of great subtlety, Pollan doesn't preach to the choir; in fact,
rarely does he preach at all, preferring to lets the facts speak for
themselves. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier
Inc. All rights reserved.
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Limits
To Growth
The 30-Year Update
by
Donella Meadows (Author)
Jorgen Randers (Author) Dennis Meadows (Author)
From Publishers Weekly
Updated for the second time since 1992, this book, by a trio of
professors and systems analysts, offers a pessimistic view of the
natural resources available for the world's population. Using
extensive computer models based on population, food production,
pollution and other data, the authors demonstrate why the world is
in a potentially dangerous "overshoot" situation. Put simply,
overshoot means people have been steadily using up more of the
Earth's resources without replenishing its supplies. The
consequences, according to the authors, may be catastrophic: "We...
believe that if a profound correction is not made soon, a crash of
some sort is certain. And it will occur within the lifetimes of many
who are alive today." After explaining overshoot, the book discusses
population and industrial growth, the limits on available resources,
pollution, technology and, importantly, ways to avoid overshoot. The
authors do an excellent job of summarizing their extensive research
with clear writing and helpful charts illustrating trends in food
consumption, population increases, grain production, etc., in a
serious tome likely to appeal to environmentalists, government
employees and public policy experts. Copyright © Reed Business
Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Molecules
of Emotion
The Science Behind
Mind-Body Medicine
by Candace, Ph.D. Pert
Book Description
There is growing interest world wide in the field of mind-body
medicine and the effect which the natural "energy forces" within the
body play in the maintenance of normal health and wellbeing. This in
turn has led to interest in how these energies or forces may be
channelled to assist in healing and restoration to health. This
book, written by a well known scientist with a degree in biophysics
and a PhD in biology, brings together for the first time evidence
from a wide range of disciplines which is beginning to provide an
acceptable explanation for the energetic exchanges that take place
in all therapies.
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A Movable Feast
Ten Millennia
of Food Globalization
by Kenneth F. Kiple (Author)
From Publishers Weekly
Recycling much historical material from the magisterial Cambridge
World History of Food (which the author co-edited), this slender
volume distills 10,000 years of food history into just 300 pages.
While the first work was notable for its rich multiplicity of voices
and deeply informed scholarship, this one is a bit of a hash, owing
to its author's insistence on squeezing a far-ranging narrative into
the narrow framework of globalism. Far from being a new economic
concept, the globalization of food, asserts Kiple, is as old as
agriculture itself (globalization being murkily defined as "a
process of homogenization whereby the cuisines of the world have
been increasingly untied from regional food production, and one that
promises to make the foods of the world available to everyone in the
world"). The strongest material examines the spread of agriculture
and its ramifications: it's a paradox of civilization that increased
food production encourages population growth, which invariably
creates food shortages and disease. That said, gastronomes will find
scraps to nibble on here and there—who knew, for example, that the
Egyptians trained their monkeys to harvest grapes? (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier
Inc. All rights reserved.
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The
Omnivore's Dilemma
A Natural History of Four Meals
by Michael Pollan (Author)
From Bookmarks Magazine
In The Botany of Desire (2001), about how people and plants coevolve, Michael Pollan teased greater issues from speciously small
phenomena. The Omnivore's Dilemma exhibits this same gift; a
Chicken McNugget, for example, illustrates our consumption of corn
and, in turn, agribusiness's oil dependency. In a journey that takes
us from an "organic" California chicken farm to Vermont, Pollan asks
basic questions about the moral and ecological consequences of our
food. Critics agree it's a wake-up call and, written in clear,
informative prose, also entertaining. Most found Pollan's quest for
his foraged meal the highlight, though the Los Angeles Times
faulted Pollan's hypocritical method of "living off the land." Many
also voiced a desire for a more concrete vision for the future. But
if the book doesn't outline a diet plan, it's nonetheless a loud,
convincing call for change.<BR>Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson
Media, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover edition.
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Plenty
One Man, One
Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally
by Alisa Smith, J.B. Mackinnon
From Booklist
Smith and MacKinnon revolt against the industrial model of food
distribution and determine to spend a year eating nothing raised or
cultivated beyond a 100-mile radius of their British Columbia home.
They seek not just health benefits and fuel efficiencies but they
also want to reconnect with small, local growers, millers,
fishermen, and ranchers to create a community where the consumer
knows both where the food comes from and who has produced it.
British Columbia, with its Marine West Coast climate, its rivers
full of salmon, and its proximity to the sea, offers unique
opportunities to pursue this resolve. Along the way, the authors
learn a lot about nutrition and uncommon varieties of fruits,
vegetables, and herbs, and all the data is shared with the reader.
Satisfying all their family's hungers proves daunting but scarcely
impossible. Entries for each month conclude with a recipe reflecting
use of seasonal ingredients. Knoblauch, Mark
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Seeds of
Deception
Exposing Industry
and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered
Foods You're Eating
by
Jeffrey M. Smith
From Publishers Weekly
Recent news headlines have focused on the disagreement between the
U.S. and Europe over genetically modified foods: the U.S. exports
them, but the European Union doesn't want to import them, believing
their safety remains unproven. Are genetically modified foods safe?
Longtime anti-GM foods campaigner Smith presents the "opposing"
case. He offers cases where GM produced results that were at best
unexpected (increased starch content in potatoes), at worst
grotesque (pigs without genitals). He describes how one corporation
reportedly tried to bribe Canadian government scientists into
approving genetically engineered bovine growth hormones they deemed
unsafe; how some scientists have reported their careers were
threatened as a result of their refusal to approve certain GM
products in the U.S.; and how "conflicts of interest, sloppy
science, and industry influence" can distort the approval process.
The cases Smith presents are scary and timely, but he explores only
one side of the story. Readers looking for a balance consideration
of genetically modified foods will want to look elsewhere.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to the Hardcover
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Soil
Not Oil
by
Vandana Shiva (Author)
With Soil Not Oil, Vandana Shiva brilliantly reveals what connects
humanity’s most urgent crises—food insecurity, peak oil, and climate
change—and why any attempt to solve one without addressing the
others will get us nowhere.
Condemning industrial biofuels and agriculture as recipes for
ecological and economic disaster, Shiva champions the small
independent farm instead. With millions hungry and the earth’s
future at peril, only sustainable, biologically diverse farms that
are more resistant to disease, drought, and flood can both feed and
safeguard the world for generations to come. Bold and
visionary, Soil Not Oil calls for a return to sound agricultural
principles—and a world based on self-organization, community, and
environmental justice.
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Spontaneous
Healing
How to Discover and Enhance
Your Body's Natural Ability to Maintain and Heal Itself
By
Andrew Weil, M.D.
From the Publisher
In this book, Dr. Andrew Weil, one of the most authoritative, and
important voices in the field of health and healing, makes clear the
reality of spontaneous healing. He illuminates the mechanisms and
processes of the body's healing system, delineates the ways in which
an individual can optimize the functioning of his or her own system,
and outlines the alternative medicines and treatments available to
aid the healing system, not only in the remission of
life-threatening diseases but also in response to everyday illnesses
and in day-to-day upkeep of basic health. In clear, concise
language, Dr. Weil explains how the healing system operates, its
interactions with the mind, its biological organization, its systems
of self-diagnosis, self-repair, and regeneration. |
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The Wisdom of Menopause
Creating Physical and
Emotional Health and Healing During the Change
By Christiane Northrup, M.D.
Publishers Weekly
Northrup (Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom), cofounder of the Women to
Women health-care center in Maine, offers a celebratory, "psychospiritual"
approach in her comprehensive guide to menopausal health and
well-being. Beginning with the premise that, though difficult, the
"hormone-driven changes that affect the brain... give a woman a
sharper eye for inequity... and a voice that insists on speaking
up," Northrup details hormonal imbalances, mood swings, serious
illnesses, treatment options and all the other symptoms, side
effects and decisions women face in midlife. Middle-aged herself,
Northrup writes from experience and, more important, from her
professional expertise as a physician who has treated many women and
researched menopause. While much of the health-care material here is
available in other sources, Northrup's approach a description of
symptoms, followed by both traditional and alternative treatment
options along with some anecdotes is particularly useful.
Occasionally she veers off into New Age jargon, but she is a firm
believer in the relevance of tangential influences on physical
health, including emotional and financial well-being. The specific
medical advice on sleep, diet, breast health and the empowerment
motif will bring insight, comfort and confidence to women embarked
on "the change." Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom
Creating Physical and Emotional
Health and Healing
By Christiane Northrup, M.D.
From the Publisher
Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom powerfully demonstrates that when women change the basic
conditions of their lives that lead to health problems, they heal
faster, more completely, and with far fewer medical interventions.
Now Dr. Northrup brings us vital new information about the best
techniques of Western medicine and the best alternative therapies,
showing how to incorporate both into a complementary whole. She
guides readers through the entire range of women's health problems,
and offers strikingly new, positive perspectives on normal
processes, such as menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause. |
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Worldly Wonder
Religions Enter Their Ecological
Phase (Master Hsuan Hua Memorial Lecture)
by Mary
Evelyn Tucker (Author), Judith Berling (Commentary)
Earthlight, Vol. 14 No. 3,
Spring 2005
Would recommend for a thorough, insightful, inspiring discussion of
the role religions are beginning to play in the ecological crisis.
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Worldchanging
A User's Guide for the 21st
Century
by Alex
Steffen (Author), Al Gore (Foreword), Bruce Sterling (Introduction)
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This 600-page companion to the eco-friendly
website of the same name (www.worldchanging.com) is chock-a-block
with information about what is going on right now to create an
environmentally and economically sustainable future-and what stands
in opposition. Along the way, editor Steffen and his team make the
stakes perfectly clear: "Oil company experts debate whether we will
effectively run out of oil in twenty years or fifty, but the
essential point remains: if you're under thirty, you can expect to
see a post-oil civilization in your lifetime." The organization of
the hefty volume mimics that of the website, divided into sections
on Stuff, Shelter, Cities, Community, Business, Politics and Planet.
Typical readers will be introduced to new concepts such as
harvesting rainwater, zero-energy houses, South-South science and
the use of flowers to detect land mines in entries on everything
from "Knowing What's Green" to "Demanding Human Rights." Each entry
is brief but comprehensive; for example, the passage on "Better Food
Everywhere" focuses on "Where it Matters Most," "Better
Restaurants," "Community Gardens," and "Urban Farming." All entries
wrap up with reviews of pertinent resources-including books,
websites and moves-where readers can get more detailed information.
With color photos on nearly every page, and written by a small army
of contributors living and working around the world (with
biographies almost as fascinating as their contributions), it's hard
to imagine a more complete resource for those hoping to live in a
future that is, as editor Steffen puts it, "bright, green, free and
tough."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a
division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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The World Without Us
by Alan
Weisman (Author)
From The New Yorker
Teasing out the consequences of a simple thought experiment—what
would happen if the human species were suddenly extinguished—Weisman
has written a sort of pop-science ghost story, in which the whole
earth is the haunted house. Among the highlights: with pumps not
working, the New York City subways would fill with water within
days, while weeds and then trees would retake the buckled streets
and wild predators would ravage the domesticated dogs. Texas’s
unattended petrochemical complexes might ignite, scattering hydrogen
cyanide to the winds—a "mini chemical nuclear winter." After
thousands of years, the Chunnel, rubber tires, and more than a
billion tons of plastic might remain, but eventually a
polymer-eating microbe could evolve, and, with the spectacular
return of fish and bird populations, the earth might revert to Eden.
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