Inprint - New Books of interest by Jeanne Spiro

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. (Penguin Press, $21.95, Hardcover.)

Food. There’s plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it? Because most of what we’re consuming today is not food, and how we’re consuming it—in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone—is not really eating. Instead of food, we’re consuming “edible foodlike substances”—no longer the products of nature but of food science. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.

But if real food—the sort of food our great grandmothers would recognize as food—stands in need of defense, from whom does it need defending? From the food industry on one side and nutritional science on the other. Both stand to gain much from widespread confusion about what to eat, a question that for most of human history people have been able to answer without expert help. Yet the professionalization of eating has failed to make Americans healthier. Thirty years of official nutritional advice has only made us sicker and fatter while ruining countless numbers of meals.

Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. By urging us to once again eat food, he challenges the prevailing nutrient-by-nutrient approach—what he calls nutritionism—and proposes an alternative way of eating that is informed by the traditions and ecology of real, well-grown, unprocessed food. Our personal health, he argues, cannot be divorced from the health of the food chains of which we are part.

In Defense of Food shows us how we can escape the Western diet and, by doing so, most of the chronic diseases that diet causes. We can relearn which foods are healthy, develop simple ways to moderate our appetites, and return eating to its proper context. Pollan’s manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.

The Essence of Healing: In Celebration of Reiki – Book One. Words by Linda Rosenthal, photos by Michele M. Preste. (Sacred Arts Publishing, $24.95, Paperback.)

Many people are curious about Reiki. They want to know what this mysterious healing energy is. Where does it come from? What can it do? What can I expect from a Reiki treatment? What would it feel like to be a Reiki practitioner?

The Essence of Healing is a beautiful attempt by Linda Rosenthal and Michele Preste to explain the essence of Reiki through gently inviting photographs and free flowing, stream of consciousness prose. It is a book to be read leisurely, as a meditative experience. It is not one about facts or statistics or left-brained descriptions of hand placements or specific healing techniques. It is one that encourages us to get out of our thinking minds and follow Reiki into our open hearts of love, where all healing takes place.

The color photos relay the Reiki experience in an intimate fashion. They capture the hands and faces of the healers, the faces of those receiving the healing, and sometimes the connection between the healer and the person receiving the energy. Worry lines disappear and wrinkles go away. The softness and intimacy seen in these images convey the essence of healing.

A Voluptuous God: A Christian Heretic Speaks by Robert V. Thompson. (Wood Lake Publishing, $24.95, Hardcover.)

Voluptuous is not a word most of us associate with God. Yet God is delicious, says Robert Thompson, minister of Lake Street Church of Evanston. God takes pleasure in simple things. God knows that laughter is the best medicine, that only love can heal what ails us, and that only joy can cause our hearts to sing. Thompson calls us to worship a God of intimacy rather than a God of distance. God and humanity hunger for closeness, and so A Voluptuous God calls us to an intimate relationship with the divine.

Rooted in Christian tradition, it affirms that truth is found in other religions and spiritualities, and in secular practices. It offers an exploration of that place, here and now, where we belong to God and to each other.

A Voluptuous God questions, and offers insight into, many of the ideas and experiences our minds and souls dance with daily. It allows us to examine our personal spiritual needs and makes accessible the larger spiritual truths that give shape and meaning to our lives.

Sixty Seconds: One Moment Changes Everything by Phil Bolsta. (Atria Books, $18.95, Hardcover.)

One moment truly can change the course of your life, usually when you least expect it. More than half of adult Americans say they have experienced their own spiritual transformation. In Sixty Seconds, Phil Bolsta offers an intimate collection of spiritual awakening stories, straight from our favorite cultural icons, both spiritual and secular.

These life-changing vignettes show that everyone is capable of experiencing profoundly sacred moments that can redirect their lives. This personal change subtly changes how we interact with others and ultimately, we are able to appreciate every day as a gift.

The 45 stories featured in Sixty Seconds are by well-known names including Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Christiane Northrup, Peter Russell, and Stephen Simon, to name a few. As they share their spiritual awakenings, the commonality shared by these prominent figures from such different backgrounds shows that life-altering experiences can happen to anyone, regardless of spiritual beliefs.

The Elephant in the Playroom: Ordinary Parents Write Intimately and Honestly about Raising Kids with Special Needs by Denise Brodey. (Plume, $14.00, Paperback.)

Four years ago, Denise Brodey’s young son was diagnosed with sensory integration dysfunction and childhood depression. As she struggled to make sense of her new, chaotic world, what she found comforted her most was talking with other parents of kids with special needs; learning how they coped with the emotional, medical, and social challenges they faced.

In The Elephant in the Playroom, Brodey introduces us to a community of moms and dads who eloquently share the highs and lows of parenting a child with ADD, ADHD, sensory disorders, childhood depression, Asperger’s syndrome, autism, and physical and learning disabilities, as well as kids who fall between diagnoses. From Florida to Alaska, with children ages three to thirty-three, the parents in this collection address everything from deciding to medicate a child to explaining a child’s behavior to strangers; from finding a school that works to taking care of themselves.

Offering readers comfort, kinship, and perspective, this is essential reading for anyone who knows a special needs child.

Blackout Girl: Growing Up and Drying Out in America by Jennifer Storm. (Hazelden, $14.95, Paperback.)

At age six she stole sips of her mother’s crème de menthe. At twelve, in the throes of her first alcohol-induced blackout, she was raped. By her junior year of high school, she could not get through a day without booze, cocaine, and eventually, crack. By the time she was in her early twenties—malnourished, broke, and utterly without hope—she gave in to the pain, confusion, and heartache that drugs could no longer numb, slashed her wrists, and ended up in a psychiatric ward.

Today, Jennifer Storm is alive and ten years sober. In her memoir, Blackout Girl, she offers a raw look at the harrowing, hopeless world of addiction—through the eyes of a disillusioned, self-destructive teenager. In heartbreaking detail, she recounts the trauma of growing up alone in a loving yet emotionally strained family. She also recounts the confusion she felt as a young teen dealing with issues of sexual identity. Her story reveals the power of forgiveness in the path to a clean, dynamic life.

Despite almost unbelievable odds, Jennifer found a way to climb out of the hell of her addictions and create the life she had always deserved. As a spokesperson for victim’s rights, she is dedicated to giving others hope for the future.

Why We Hurt: A Complete Physical & Spiritual Guide to Healing Your Chronic Pain by Dr. Greg Fors. (Llewellyn Worldwide, $24.95, Paperback.)

After seeing his teenage daughter disabled with fibromyalgia, Dr Greg Fors was compelled to return to academia to find answers for those whose lives are frustrated by chronic pain. In Why We Hurt, he describes the development of chronic pain as a result of our lifestyle of convenience and the roadblocks put in place by our modern approach to healing. He discovered the primary culprits behind chronic pain are not only our diet and lifestyle choices, but also the environmental toxins in our food, air, water and cosmetics, as well as our own perceptions that lead to psychological stress.

In this comprehensive approach to healing from the inside out, Dr. Fors dispels common misconceptions about conventional and alternative therapies and explains how the whole person must be treated—body, mind, and spirit. He prescribes a triangle of healing, with practical physical, nutritional, and spiritual solutions. This science-based alternative approach includes sound dietary recommendations, use of supplements, suggestions for healthy living, and proper detoxification strategies for living in a toxic world. He includes a section on self-administered therapy for myofascial trigger points, with diagrams and instructions relating to specific pain conditions. This is an approach that puts you in charge of your health.