About Netsurfer Books

Netsurfer Books is a bi-monthly e-zine offering short reviews of books and related items. We include listings based on recommendations from our staff and reviews from other individuals. Are we bribed to include any of these items? No. Do we receive a commission if you purchase an item through one of the links included here? Yes. Are we waiting to hear from you about what you'd like to see reviewed? Definitely.

IN THIS ISSUE

In This Issue

EDITOR'S CHOICE

Beyond Greed and Fear: Understanding Behavioral Finance and the Psychology of Investing

Beyond Greed and Fear: Understanding Behavioral Finance and the Psychology of Investing
Hersh Shefrin
Harvard Business School Press; ISBN: 0875848729

In the recent past, primarily big trading firms moved stock prices. In this day of easy online trading, the markets are more and more at the whim of large numbers of ordinary individuals. This scholarly book can help you understand what you're up against when you click your buy and sell orders. It's a primer on the emerging field of behavioral finance, discussing how fear, hope, overconfidence, and the need for short-term gratification move markets.

BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL

Be Your Own Executive Coach: Master High-Impact Communications Skills

Be Your Own Executive Coach: Master High-Impact Communications Skills
Peter Delisser
Chandler House Press; ISBN: 188628444X

Mentors have become the most sought after people in corporate America. Author Delisser may be far removed from your workplace, but it hasn't stopped him from earning high marks from reviewers and readers alike for his lessons in effective listening and communicating. He even teaches us how to communicate with people who don't listen. Companies are sending the book to their executives; readers are giving the book as gifts. If you're navigating the corporate world, Delisser can help you chart your course.

No Logo

No Logo
Naomi Klein
Picador USA; ISBN: 0312203438

This week comes news of yet another mega-merger and we are worried. And, frankly, it's not just because monopolies and quasi-monopolies stand to make a lot of money. No, we're worried more about how our personal choices - those based in our personal philosophies, not in our consumerism - may become more and more limited. Naomi Klein is worried, too. She's worried about all of us walking around like organic billboards, paying through the nose for the privilege of sporting someone else's name or philosophy of life on our chests, or foreheads, our backsides. She's worried, too, about how this translates into employment practices, as fewer and fewer employers require more massive and disposable workforces. Nor does the virtualness of the Web merchandising escape her attention. Herewith, we offer you something else to worry about in the coming century.

Wounded Workers: The Politics of Musculoskeletal Injuries

Wounded Workers: The Politics of Musculoskeletal Injuries
Penney Kome
University of Toronto Press; ISBN: 0802077951

This is emphatically not an exercise manual for workers suffering cumulative trauma disorders or repetitive stress injury, the number one work-related disorder of the computer age. The book is more closely akin to a manifesto for employees of companies that judge the seriousness of injury by the cost-benefit to shareholders. There are about 300,000 such injuries each year in the US, and the costs, direct and indirect, run into the tens of billions of dollars - not to mention the thousands of surgeries that workers endure - to little effect in late stages of the injury. Women, still relegated to of the keying jobs, suffer most, reducing their mobility and dexterity at home. At the same time that these injuries are on the rise, employers and insurers are looking for ways to reduce coverage or declare sufferers ineligible for benefits. The field of ergonomics has become a battlefield of competing philosophies, regulations, and litigation. Union officers, employers, computer users: Here's one of the fastest growing health and safety issues of the new century's first decade.

Complete Idiot's Guide to Beating Debt

Complete Idiot's Guide to Beating Debt
Steven D. Strauss, Azriela L. Jaffe
MacMillan Distribution; ISBN: 0028627326

There's no need to fear for your lifestyle with this advice book. Instead, Strauss and Jaffe just point you to smarter thinking about money, credit cards, and your paycheck. The authors, in fact, are the first to tell you that - like some kinds of cholesterol - some kinds of debt are good. The trick is to identify which debt is good and which will, well, which will give you a stroke. If smarter management of your finances made your list of resolutions, this book is the place to start.

Never Be Lied to Again: How to Get the Truth in 5 Minutes or Less in Any Conversation or Situation

Never Be Lied to Again: How to Get the Truth in 5 Minutes or Less in Any Conversation or Situation
David J. Lieberman
St Martins Pr (Trade); ISBN: 0312186347

Pitting the estimable Pembleton against a remorseless murderer in The Box wouldn't have been nearly as much fun if we'd all read this book "Homicide: Life on the Street" bit the video dust. Lieberman shows us how to be our own lie detectors, taking our cues from body language, facial expressions, phrasing, and involuntary reactions. Then, turning the table on our deceivers, we can use our own body language and verbal cues to get to the truth - much of the time. Lieberman can''t change us into Star Trekkian empaths or mind readers, and you'd want to be careful about relying on your perceptions where facts don't support your suspicions (or your confidence). But, Lieberman can help to level the playing field if you have reason to think you're being lied to in your business or personal affairs.

HEALTH, HOME AND FAMILY

Banish Your Belly

Banish Your Belly
Kenton Robinson, Dragomir Cioroslan
Rodale Pr; ISBN: 0875965016

Praised by users for its realistic and practical approach to a strong, healthy man's body, Banish Your Belly is the product of a collaboration with Dragomir Cioroslan, once coach of the US Olympic weightlifting team. Neither trendy nor deluded, it tells readers a strong healthy body is the reward for hard work and conscientious attention to diet. Amply illustrated, the book shows you the proper way to do more than 100 exercises. Here's your chance to make that membership at the gym really count.

Stretching

Stretching
Bob Anderson, Jean Anderson
Shelter Pubns; ISBN: 0936070013

Those of us who sit at a workstation all day know that being healthy and feeling healthy can be two entirely different things. Back pain, stiff joints, muscle tightness, tension, and headache compromise the mobility of even people who are otherwise on sound physical ground. The Andersons show you how to keep yourself really feeling healthy using little more exotic equipment than a doorframe and a chair. Don't expect sweat-soaked cardio workouts from the book. It's all about slow, deliberate exercise that may teach you more about getting in touch with your muscles than you'd feel in a lifetime of jazzercise.

I Can Remember: A Daily Journal for People With Memory Problems

I Can Remember: A Daily Journal for People With Memory Problems
Gerry Olin Greengrass
Putnam Pub Group (T); ISBN: 0874779529

Some Netsurfer staff have seen the devastation of memory loss due to progressive disease or encroaching age. We've lost mothers and fathers to it, long before death actually claimed them. Greengrass was going through the same experience with her father, whose short-term memory was lost of old age. In their shared grief, Greenglass and her father developed a journal for him, one that chronicled his daily life - walks, meals, visits, telephone calls. It enabled him to reconstruct his day, making conversations meaningful again for the pair. More than that, it enabled him to reconstruct a sense of time and identify, and a relationship with his family. Greenglass recounts their story in this book, and offers others a template for the journal that meant so much to her and her father. It might help you strengthen one of your own relationships before it's too late.

When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair

When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair
Geneen Roth
Hyperion; ISBN: 0786863951

Geneen Roth is a battle-scarred veteran of the weight-loss wars, but she's found a way to win on her own terms rather than relying on external validation. Roth looks beyond calories to the matter of real satisfaction. Eat at least one hot meal every day, she says, because a hot meal will make your feel more full than a cold one. With only the barest hint of irony, she recommends that you do one "exquisitely kind" thing for yourself each day; buy new underwear - or take a sledgehammer to your scale. Most of all, though, Roth wants you to "separate the desire to be thin from the desire to be cherished". Now, does that sound familiar or what? This woman is a real woman in our books.

NONFICTION

Making the Big Move: How to Transform Relocation into a Creative Life Transition

Making the Big Move: How to Transform Relocation into a Creative Life Transition
Cathy Goodwin
New Harbinger Pubns; ISBN: 1572241357

Don't expect advice on packing Aunt Maudie's china or how to get that baby grand into your 4th-floor walk-up. This is a book about moving as a life-altering personal growth experience. Goodwin, who has relocated more than a dozen times to places right across North America, offers advice and practical exercises on how to decide if and why to move, how to cope with your fear and sense of displacement, how to establish new routines that put you at home right away, how to accommodate and beat back homesickness at the same time, and more. North America has become a collective of displaced persons; take a look at reader's comments to see how well Goodwin can help you leave their ranks.

Single Again: A Guide for Women Starting Over

Single Again: A Guide for Women Starting Over
Victoria Jaycox
W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN: 0393046990

Jaycox has done women a service with this book. First, she actually interviewed 88 women whose lives had been thrown into disorder and chaos by the loss of a husband. Then, in writing her advice, she well and truly relied on the experiences of those women to offer support and guidance to her readers. This isn't a glib vaguely life-affirming push toward melodramatic renewal. Instead, Jaycox offers advice about lawyers, finding a job, deciding on a suitable home, and moving. Of course, there are sections on the more amorphous issues of grieving and moving on, but they aren't the focus of the book, and the practical matters aren't sacrificed to the emotional ones. Just the way it should be.

Mars and Venus Starting Over: A Practical Guide for Finding Love Again After a Painful Breakup, Divorce, or the Loss of a Loved One

Mars and Venus Starting Over: A Practical Guide for Finding Love Again After a Painful Breakup, Divorce, or the Loss of a Loved One
John Gray
Harper Mass Market Paperbacks; ISBN: 0061098388

Yeah, at least some Netsurfers think that women and men see and experience the world differently - for whatever reasons. We tried - really we did - to find something that would speak to men starting over, too. But, most of the titles dealt with divorce specifically, and not always in the most constructive terms; Scr ew the Bitch is a case in point. This is the book we settled on - 'though settling with John Gray doesn't imply any real compromise. Gray's Mars and Venus books have sat atop bestsellers lists and on the featured items shelves in bookstores for a long while now. Too bad he often gets herded into that throng of new-age self-help self-absorbed self-serving claptrappists, 'cause we think his sound observations and advice put him a cut above.

Passionate Marriage: Love, Sex, and Intimacy in Emotionally Committed Relationships

Passionate Marriage: Love, Sex, and Intimacy in Emotionally Committed Relationships
David Schnarch
Henry Holt (Paper); ISBN: 0805058265

We're just going to quote the book's merchandising blurb - and then tell you that every single one of the 17 reader reviews at Amazon.com gave it five stars. "Couples therapists often specialize in one or the other--sex or the relationship. It's a ridiculous separation says marital and sex therapist David Schnarch, who believes sex is the all-telling barometer of a love relationship. Schnarch's fundamental lesson is differentiation--the often threatening process of defining yourself as separate from your partner, which inevitably draws you closer to your partner than you ever dreamed possible. Schnarch uses dramatic therapy sessions to illustrate how differentiation doesn't just cure sexual dysfunction; it helps couples reach the mind-blowing heights of their sexual potential. A groundbreaking and truly erotic discussion of adult sexuality." Intrigued? We'll just add a reminder that reading can be its own reward.

The Male Couple's Guide: Finding a Man, Making a Home, Building a Life

The Male Couple's Guide: Finding a Man, Making a Home, Building a Life
Eric Marcus
HarperCollins (paper); ISBN: 006095275X

So, the new century marks your decision to settle down and make a home. Of course, there are no guarantees for any of us, and we all usually stumble around trying to make it all work out right. But, things can get especially complicated for same-sex couples, so Eric Marcus' male couple's guide might perhaps go to the top of your reading list. He offers a well received comprehensive guide to social, legal, financial, emotional, familial, and professional issues that come with being part of a male couple. He also speaks to the matters of dating, commitment, sharing a home, children, and health.

A History of Celibacy: From Athena to Elizabeth I, Leonardo Da Vinci, Florence Nightingale, Ghandi, and Cher

A History of Celibacy: From Athena to Elizabeth I, Leonardo Da Vinci, Florence Nightingale, Ghandi, and Cher
Elizabeth Abbott
Scribner; ISBN: 0684849437

Taking a radical new approach to sex? You're not alone - so to speak. We still think that programs urging celibacy to combat teen pregnancy are simplistic, and that they bring peer pressure into ugly relief; still, the matter is even more complex among adults - especially sexually active adults - making a conscious choice. Amazon tells us this book won't be available until May, so your millennial resolution may need to mature a little before you read this meditation on celibacy. We know, though, that the book is available from at least one large Canadian book seller, so you might find that Amazon can offer you more immediate gratification. Otherwise, you might want to bookmark it.

DIVERSIONS

Battling the Inner Dummy: The Craziness of Apparently Normal People

Battling the Inner Dummy: The Craziness of Apparently Normal People
David L. Weiner, Gilbert M. Hefter (Contributor)
Prometheus Books; ISBN: 1573927473

Why? Why? Why? Why do perfectly rational people - you and we, for instance - do things that are perfectly irrational? Weiner thinks he knows why, and it has to do with Freud's concept of id - which Weiner identifies as our Inner Dummy. If he plays a little fast and loose with Freudian theory, it's only to make it accessible; the principles remain sound in his good-humored telling. Get in touch with your own Inner Dummy. The rest of the world is waiting, after all.

The Memory Kit: Great for School, Work or Just for Fun

The Memory Kit: Great for School, Work or Just for Fun
Rob Eastaway
Element; ISBN: 1901881644

Eastaway's memory kit includes two parts. There's a book that explains memory and ways that you can improve it, and includes exercises that will get those memory muscles into shape. The other half of the package is a set of 50 mnemonic devices for recalling standard information. Thanks to Eastaway, for instance, we don't have to consult a reference to tell you that the planets, in order from the Sun are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Use the mnemonics for their intended purpose, or build new ones employing them as models. That's not a bad exercise either. The publisher is Element Children's Books, so the focus is on helping kids develop their memories, but you won't be embarrassed to be caught reading these little self-help books yourself.

The Illustrated Discovery Journal: Creating a Visual Autobiography of Your Authentic Self

The Illustrated Discovery Journal: Creating a Visual Autobiography of Your Authentic Self
Sarah Ban Breathnach (Introduction)
Warner Books; ISBN: 0446521442

Making a comeback in a big way: journals. 'Way beyond diaries, and far richer than electronic records, journals combine diaries and scrap books, confidences you'll tell only yourself and musings that have nothing whatever to do with the day's events. Breathnach's discovery journal takes it all into account. She gives you all the requisite tools - blank pages, pocket pages, a great looking spiralbound package that lies flat to make writing easy. But, she also offers a few inspirational springboards to help you free yourself for the task of creating your autobiographical journal - moody illustrations, provocative quotations, a handful of creative exercises. Intelligently used, this book can be a fine tool for the introspective rather than the self-absorbed.

Journal to the Soul for Teenagers

Journal to the Soul for Teenagers
Rose Offner
Celestial Arts; ISBN: 0890878994

Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul may get most of the press, but we like Rose Offner's Journal to the Soul for Teenagers as well. Teenagers turn inward and Offner helps them through the self-discovery that we all hope will be the outcome. She also touches explicitly and realistically on relationship with family , the conflicting aspects of friendship when support and peer pressure can become confused, teenage emotions, self-acceptance and self-forgiveness, sharing, self-esteem and love, growth and change, and identifying and fulfilling dreams. We all remember how difficult it was to be a teenager, and most of us hadn't yet been held up to the idealized "family values" measuring stick. Kids need books like these.

The Healing Journey Through Retirement

The Healing Journey Through Retirement
Phil Rich, Dorothy Madway Sampson, Dale S. Fetherling
John Wiley & Sons; ISBN: 0471326933

Phil Rich, PhD, MSW is a clinical psychologist and social worker. He's also the principal author of a recent series of the Healing Journal self-help books. For the most part, we like the subjects he tackles, some of which haven't really had a lot of attention. He employs a guided journal strategy, to help readers identify and meet their challenges. Several of the titles have a separate manual for therapists, but Rich's approach doesn't require a therapist's participation. Rich is another of the self-help advisors that we like, largely because his approach isn't based in affirmation without context; Rich demands his readers' participation. His other offerings include The Healing Journey Through Menopause, The Healing Journey Through Job Loss, The Healing Journey Through Grief, and The Healing Journey for Couples, among others.