Category Archives: Books

Books

In My Hands Today…

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The Starch Solution: Eat the Foods You Love, Regain Your Health, and Lose the Weight for Good! – John A. McDougall, Mary McDougall

From Atkins to Dukan, the fear-mongering about carbs over the past few decades has reached a fever pitch; the mere mention of a starch-heavy food is enough to trigger a cavalcade of shame and longing.

In The Starch Solution, bestselling diet doctor and board-certified internist John A. McDougall, MD, and his kitchen-savvy wife, Mary, turn the notion that starch is bad for you on its head. The Starch Solution is based on a simple swap: fueling your body primarily with carbohydrates rather than proteins and fats. This will help you lose weight and prevent a variety of ills.

Fad diets come and go, but Dr. McDougall has been a proponent of the plant-based diet for decades, and his medical credibility is unassailable. He is one of the mainstay experts cited in the bestselling and now seminal China Study—called the “Grand Prix of epidemiology” by the New York Times. But what The China Study lacks is a plan.

Dr. McDougall grounds The Starch Solution in rigorous scientific fact and research, giving readers easy tools to implement these changes into their lifestyle with a 7-Day Quick Start Plan and 100 delicious recipes. This book includes testimonials from among the hundreds Dr. McDougall has received, including people who have lost more than 125 pounds in mere months as well as patients who have conquered lifethreatening illnesses such as diabetes and cardiac ailments.

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Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life – Shigehiro Oishi

For many people, a good life is a stable life, a comfortable life that follows a well-trodden path. This is the case for Shigehiro Oishi’s father, who has lived in a small mountain town in Japan for his entire life, putting his family’s needs above his own, like his father and grandfather before him. But is a happy life, or even a meaningful life, the only path to a good life?

In Life in Three Dimensions, Shige Oishi enters into a debate that has animated psychology since 1984, when Ed Diener (Oishi’s mentor) published a paper that launched happiness studies. A rival followed in 1989 with a model of a good life that focused on purpose and meaning instead. In recent years, Shige Oishi’s award-winning work has proposed a third dimension to a good psychological richness, a concept that prioritizes curiosity, exploration, and a variety of experiences that help us grow as people.

Life in Three Dimensions explores the shortcomings of happiness and meaning as guides to a good life, pointing to complacency and regret as a “happiness trap” and narrowness and misplaced loyalty as a “meaning trap.” Psychological richness, Oishi proposes, balances the other two, offering insight and growth spurred by embracing uncertainty and challenges.

In a lively style, drawing on a generation of psychological studies and on examples from famous people, books and film, Oishi introduces a new path to a fuller, more satisfying life with fewer regrets.

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How to Be Enough: Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics and Perfectionists – Ellen Hendriksen

Are you your own toughest critic? Learn to be good to yourself with this clear and compassionate guide.

Do you set demanding standards for yourself? If so, a lot likely goes well in your life: You might earn compliments, admiration, or accomplishments. Your high standards and hard work pay off.

But privately, you may feel like you’re falling behind, faking it, or different from everybody else. Your eagle-eyed inner quality control inspector highlights every mistake. You try hard to avoid criticism, but criticize yourself. Trying to get it right is your guiding light, but it has lit the way to a place of dissatisfaction, loneliness, or disconnection. In short, you may look like you’re hitting it out of the park, but you feel like you’re striking out.

This is perfectionism. And for everyone who struggles with it, it’s a misnomer: perfectionism isn’t about striving to be perfect. It’s about never feeling good enough.

Dr. Ellen Hendriksen—clinical psychologist, anxiety specialist, and author of How to Be Yourself—is on the same journey as you. In How to Be Enough, Hendriksen charts a flexible, forgiving, and freeing path, all without giving up the excellence your high standards and hard work have gotten you. She delivers seven shifts—including from self-criticism to kindness, control to authenticity, procrastination to productivity, comparison to contentment—to find self-acceptance, rewrite the Inner Rulebook, and most of all, cultivate the authentic human connections we’re all craving.

With compassion and humor, Hendriksen lays out a clear, effective, and empowering guide. To enjoy rather than improve, be real rather than impressive, and be good to yourself when you’re wired to be hard on yourself.

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Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show – Bethany Joy Lenz

In the early 2000s, after years of hard work and determination to breakthrough as an actor, Bethany Joy Lenz was finally cast as one of the leads on the hit drama One Tree Hill. Her career was about to take off, but her personal life was slowly beginning to unravel. What none of the show’s millions of fans knew, hidden even from her costars, was her secret double life in a cult.

An only child who often had to fend for herself and always wanted a place to belong, Lenz found the safe haven she’d been searching for in a Bible study group with other Hollywood creatives. However, the group soon morphed into something more sinister—a slowly woven web of manipulation, abuse, and fear under the guise of a church covenant called The Big House Family. Piece by piece, Lenz began to give away her autonomy, ultimately relocating to the Family’s Pacific Northwest compound, overseen by a domineering minister who would convince Lenz to marry one of his sons and steadily drained millions of her TV income without her knowledge. Family “minders” assigned to her on set, “Maoist struggle session”–inspired meetings in the basement of a filthy house, and regular counseling with “Leadership” were just part of the tactics used to keep her loyal.

Only when she became a mother did Lenz find the courage to leave and spare her child from a similar fate. After nearly a decade (and with the unlikely help of a One Tree Hill superfan), she finally managed to escape the family’s grip and begin to heal from the deep trauma that forever altered her relationship with God and her understanding of faith. Written with powerful honesty and dark humor, Dinner for Vampires is an inspiring story about the importance of identity and understanding what you believe.

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Tasting History: Explore the Past through 4,000 Years of Recipes – Max Miller, Ann Volkwein

What began as a passion project when Max Miller was furloughed during Covid-19 has become a viral YouTube sensation.

The Tasting History with Max Miller channel has thrilled food enthusiasts and history buffs alike as Miller recreates a dish from the past, often using historical recipes from vintage texts, but updated for modern kitchens as he tells stories behind the cuisine and culture.

From ancient Rome to Ming China to medieval Europe and beyond, Miller has collected the best-loved recipes from around the world and has shared them with his fans. Now, with beautiful photographs portraying the dishes and historical artwork throughout, Tasting History compiles over sixty dishes such as Tuh’ a red beet stew with leeks dating back to 1740 BC, deep-fried cheese balls with honey and poppy seeds, soul yeasted buns with currants from circa 1600, pumpkin a crustless pumpkin cheesecake with cinnamon and sugar on top from 1570, and much more.

Including the original recipe and Miller’s modern recreation, this cookbook is a must-have for any avid cook or history fan looking to experience delicious recipes from the past.