Great Books

From the bestselling author of Get With the Program! and Bob Greene's Total Body Makeover comes The Best Life Diet, a lifetime plan for losing weight and keeping it off. Bob Greene helped Oprah achieve her dramatic weight loss, and he can help you too. You'll eat the same delicious food that Oprah enjoys, and, just like Oprah, you'll have Bob to encourage you at every step. Unlike a celebrity, however, you don't need to hire a staff of experts to aid and advise you, because Bob's plan, easily tailored to an array of tastes, lifestyles, and activity levels, acts as your personal trainer and private nutritionist. Just open the book and let Bob help you get started down the path toward your best possible life. What sets Bob apart from all the other experts who claim to have plans that work is that he admits that weight loss is difficult: seventeen years of watching people struggle to lose weight on a seemingly endless string of trendy crash diets, only to backslide and regain the pounds they've shed, have taught him that dropping pounds is not simply a numbers game. By acknowledging that it is not simple laziness but a complicated web of social rituals, cultural expectations, and habits that drives people to gain weight, Greene is able to attack the problem of weight loss realistically and offer not a short-lived, quick-fix formula, but a long-term program that accounts for the challenges and constraints of the real world.Divided into three phases, The Best Life Diet gives you the tools you need to change your life. In each phase, you'll be asked to reexamine the decisions you make on a daily basis and gradually alter your habits to achieve lasting results. The book also includes easy-to-follow meal plans that make it simple to meet your daily energy and nutrient requirements, whether you are on the run and breakfast means a quick smoothie or you have time to shop for fresh produce and make something special. You'll watch the weight disappear as you learn to prepare festive and flavorful dishes like Fire-Roasted Tomato-Shrimp Veracruz, Chicken Sausage Jambalaya, or Flank Steak with Chimichurri Topping and indulge in desserts like Roasted Peaches with Ricotta and Almonds or Apple Rhubarb Walnut Crisp. And for each delicious recipe, there is a detailed nutritional analysis, so you know exactly what you are eating and how it fits into your personal eating plan. Most important, Bob's plan doesn't end once you've lost the weight. Instead, it gives you the tools you need to make living your best life second nature, because for Greene, a diet is not something you go "on" or "off" but a set of guidelines that will help you claim the life you deserve.

The passion for life lists has spawned an industry that includes thoughtful experts such as Caroline Miller, a life coach and motivational book author, and Dr. Michael Frisch, a positive psychology coach and clinical psychologist at Baylor University. Working together, they have fashioned the most useful, science-based, and up-to-date book on the topic of goal setting and accomplishment. Creating Your Best Life supplies dozens of interactive exercises and quizzes readers can use to identify their most cherished needs, ambitions, and wishes. The exercises are fun, making the process of self-discovery enjoyable and productive. The authors’ unique “life list coaching” program organizes life lists into 16 key areas that are universally known to make people happy—to help you actually achieve your aspirations. No other life list book offers research-validated information on why certain steps matter in goal accomplishment, or even how goals are connected with any type of life satisfaction.Readers will feel both educated and inspired to start writing goal-setting lists in order to live their lives more consciously, productively, and happily.

Peter Kreeft's Socrates probes the contemporary values of success, power and pleasure.

A good meal is one of life's great pleasures, but we all know that it can be difficult to choose foods that make us happy and keep us healthy. In his New York Times bestselling book The Best Life Diet, Bob Greene showed more than a million people that you can lose weight and eat delicious food. Now, in The Best Life Diet Cookbook he provides more than 175 recipes that taste as good as they are good for you.With recipes like Flank Steak with Potatoes and Garlic and Sweet-and-Sour Stuffed Chicken, it isn't hard to eat well while shedding pounds. Slimmed-down comfort foods like Sweet Potato with Turkey Hash and Beef Stew with Winter Root Vegetables make family dinners satisfying and healthful. Rotisserie Chicken Salad with Oranges and Pistachios comes together in a snap. Or try one of the recipes contributed by world-class chefs like Charlie Trotter or Suzanne Goin, adapted to fit the Best Life guidelines. Craving something sweet? You won't believe that Pear and Banana Crisp and Apple Pie with Oatmeal Crust are low in fat and calories.Also included are three sets of two-week meal plans: The Quick and Easy Plan for when you're most time-pressed; The Family-Friendly Plan with meals to satisfy the whole gang; and The Kitchen Connoisseur Plan for those looking for more of a challenge in the kitchen. Whether you're trying to drop some pounds or simply want to maintain your weight, these plans do all the calorie-calculating for you.The Best Life Diet Cookbook is full of useful shopping tips and culinary information. Illustrated with dozens of beautiful black-and-white and color photographs, it is a book you will turn to again and again.Bob Greene firmly believes that every meal should be a celebration both of the pleasures of food and your commitment to living your best possible life, and with The Best Life Diet Cookbook, you can reclaim your joy of eating and live the life you deserve.

Bob Greene has helped millions of Americans become fit and healthy with his life-changing Best Life plan. Now, for the first time, Oprah's trusted expert on diet and fitness teams up with a leading endocrinologist and an expert dietitian to offer a Best Life program tailored to the needs of people with diabetes and pre-diabetes. Coping with the unique challenges of living with these conditions can feel like a full-time job. That's why The Best Life Guide to Managing Diabetes and Pre-Diabetes takes a gradual, three-phase approach to improving diet and increasing physical activity and provides strategies for staying motivated. While offering clear guidance, the program is flexible enough that you can tailor it to your needs and abilities. The result: A way of living that improves blood sugar and helps you stave off heart disease, neuropathy, and other diabetes- and pre-diabetes-related conditions while reaching and maintaining a healthy weight. This comprehensive yet readable volume offers the information you need to protect your health whether you are controlling your disease simply with diet and exercise, are taking drugs orally, or need injected insulin. Detailed but flexible meal plans take the guesswork out of eating without making you a slave to the food scale or measuring cups. With complete nutritional analyses, the recipes for budget- and family-friendly dishes such as Vanilla Peanut Butter Smoothie, Cheesy Cornbread, and Slow-Cooked Pork ensure that you never have to sacrifice tasty food. Extensive reference sections, including a complete guide to diabetes drugs and a chart of the carbohydrate value of foods, give you quick answers you can trust, while a log for tracking your blood sugar readings, exercise, and medication helps you stay organized without hassle or added expense. With The Best Life Guide to Managing Diabetes and Pre-Diabetes, you won't have to let your life be defined by your diagnosis.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Joel Osteen presents his signature multi-million copy book in trade paperback.

Houston televangelist Joel Osteen is well qualified to write this book, having used the seven principles he shares to achieve his own "rags-to-riches" story. At the heart of Osteen’s message is that achieving a successful, prosperous life of fulfillment can only occur when we stop worrying about the past or future to make the most of each present moment by using our God-given strengths and talents to achieve our goals. The key to doing so are the seven steps Osteen outlines: Enlarge Your Vision, Develop a Healthy Self-Image, Discover the Power of Your Thoughts and Words, Let go of the Past, Find Strength Through Adversity, Live to Give, and Choose to Be Happy. Mixing biblical teachings with his own personal experiences, Osteen explains each of these seven steps in an encouraging, optimistic manner that makes them accessible to anyone interested in principles of personal growth. Although written with a Christian slant, the seven steps Osteen shares will have value to anyone wanting to know more about practical steps of self-betterment, regardless of their denomination.--Larry Trivieri Jr.

Baby Boomer AlertGet ready for the next prime of your life! Today we're living so much longer and more productively that age sixtyhas truly become the new age forty-the prime of life when our careers are in full swing, our minds are at their most creative, and our passions burn their hottest. -Mark Victor Hansen and Art Linkletter So how do we ensure that our bodies remain fit, our minds alert and creative, our finances stable-even growing-throughout our senior years? TV icon Art Linkletter (incredibly active in several enterprises at the age of 94) and Chicken Soup for the Soul® cocreator Mark Victor Hansen team up to show us how. Much more than a pep talk about maintaining a youthful attitude in our Second Prime, How to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life provides tools we can use: strategies, self-tests, worksheets and resources, plus dozens of inspiring stories and humorous anecdotes. Woven together by the authors' own invincible spirits, these empowering principles come alive as Hansen and Linkletter motivate us to find greater purpose and passion in what we do, making the rest of our lives the best ever.

Trustworthy guidance for teens on how to be certain of God's will for their lives. Unlocks the power of Scripture, prayer, counsel and circumstances in exploring God's specific plan for an individual's life.

Being happy doesn't have to be hard, says prominent personal coach Laura Berman Fortgang. We each possess an internal compass that expresses our individual wisdom and points to the things that would most fulfill us. Personal and professional satisfaction, Fortgang believes, comes from tapping into this wisdom. In Living Your Best Life, she offers ten tried-and-true strategies that help us to access our own inner knowledge to achieve what she calls a "best life"-a life that awaits all of us, in which gains come more easily because we've learned to honor our true desires and work with our individual talents rather than exhausting our energy on a traditional model of achievement. Her techniques focus on asking ourselves what we really want instead of frenetically trying to "have it all." We learn to ask questions that move us forward, not backward, to discover our own unique "lucrative purpose," and to design a "magnet" life plan that draws to us the more rewarding existence we deserve.

Useful for individuals, small groups, and churches, Joel presents a one-week study devoted to each chapter of the book and offers discussion questions, relevant Scripture, and insightful narrative to inspire readers to greatness. As people strive to go higher, rise above their obstacles, and to live in health, abundance, and victory. . .yet again, Joel guides the way.