Book Review: High Performance Health

Author: James M. Rippe, M.D.
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
ISBN: not assigned yet

How do you define "good health?" Being disease free? Performing essential physical functions independently? Being physically fit or athletic? Maintaining a good weight? According to Dr, James Rippe, none of these notions completely captures what it means to be healthy. He suggests that a better way to achieve optimal health is to adopt a "values-based approach" that pays attention to physical factors, quality of life and spiritual well being.

In the book's first section, Diagnosis and Understanding, Rippe uses ten chapters to explain the seven basic strategies behind his values-based approach to high performance health. These are:

• Physical activity
• Weight control
• Nutrition
• Hydration
• Rest
• Positive Environment for Change
• Appropriate Mind-Set

Rippe introduces readers to the basic concepts behind all of these strategies and directs them to numerous resources from which they can acquire additional information. Equally important, he explains the pitfalls of particular exercise and diet fads and addresses how to incorporate each strategy into an overall healthy lifestyle. Rippe strongly encourages his readers, particularly those who have been sedentary, to adopt walking programs for their initial exercise regimes. He also encourages his readers to keep journals for developing health plans, setting goals and tracking their progress. Rippe assists readers in starting their journals by providing brief assignments at the end of every chapter. By the time readers finish all of the exercises in the book, they will have discovered ways to make their journals uniquely personal and useful to themselves.

The second section of the book, Action Plan, consists of two chapters. The first of these outlines "ten steps for achieving high performance health:"

• Assess health, set goals, track progress
• Connect with your body and mind
• Use active rest principles
• Establish a "third place"
• Fifteen minutes of solitude
• Thirty minutes of physical activity
• Discover spiritual age and live it
• Eat to fuel performanc
• Connect with others
• Connect with your spirit

The concepts behind these steps are explained in the book's first section, then rearranged and summarized here. The book's final chapter is a brief summary of Rippe's personal story of striving for optimal, or, as he calls it, high performance, health.

High Performance Health is a clearly written book that does not intimidate readers with vast bulk or dense verbiage. It is a good introduction to the issues involved in developing healthy lifestyles. Although it can be scanned quickly, readers who are serious about improving their health will want to take time to do the assignments carefully and slowly incorporate the strategies into their lives. I highly recommend this book to them.

Book Review: Ladykiller

Authors: Lawrence Light & Meredith Anthony
Publisher: Oceanview Publishing
ISBN: 10-1-933515-05-8

NYPD detective Dave Dillon is a good cop with terrible taste in women. His last doomed love affair nearly cost him his job. As it stands now, if he doesn’t find the serial murderer known as the Ladykiller, his career will be ruined forever. Dave follows the clues to the West Side Crisis Center, where he meets an interesting assortment of social workers. When one of the center’s counselors is murdered, Dave knows that he is closing in on the killer. The story hurtles forward at a breakneck pace until a breathtaking showdown in a city park. Then, just as the reader believes the story is winding down, the authors add one more twist to the plot and the book concludes on a bone-chilling note.

Ladykiller is an engrossing story in which the momentum builds from page one and never stops. One mildly disconcerting quirk is an early, unexpected turn in plot development. The story begins as a whodunit mystery in which the reader expects to follow the detective in deciphering clues and unveiling the killer’s identity. Then, about 20% of the way into the story, the killer is revealed and the story shifts to a cat-and-mouse tale in which the killer and the detective seek to outwit each other. This plot shift briefly throws the reader off-balance but, in general, the authors manage it skillfully and the story moves forward without faltering.

Light and Anthony give their story a strong setting with their lucid portraits of city streets and neighborhoods. Their character development skills are not quite as strong, or, perhaps, not as evenly applied. Dave Dillon, the main character is fairly interesting and the authors skillfully pace their revelations of his past and personality throughout the book. The book’s other characters don’t fare as well. For example, I wish Dave’s mother had played a larger role in the book, as her story could have added an intriguing dimension to the plot. Furthermore, Nita is relentlessly domineering and Megan is nauseatingly submissive and indecisive. Most of the other characters are similarly one-dimensional and the reader gains little sense of what motivates them to act and speak as they do. In general, the characters seem to be sketched rather than filled with flesh and blood. Clearly, this story’s appeal rests on fast-paced plotting and vivid setting rather than intense or moving characters.

Ladykiller is ideal for reading on a plane or at the beach. Readers who like mysteries and suspense thrillers will find it good for a couple of hours of entertainment.

Book Review: Fish of Souls

It’s September 1999. Curt Lockes has recently purchased a tantalizing 400-year-old manuscript on e-bay. On the morning after Curt is shaken by a horrifying nightmare, Scott Seymour spies a bizarre cloud on the horizon. Following the clues divulged in the manuscript, Curt and Scott set out to uncover its secrets, as well as the meanings of the nightmare and the cloud. They will soon learn that the ultimate secret connecting all of these things is rooted in the Old Testament book of Genesis.

As Curt and Scott set out on their quest they visit some of Florida’s enticing historical venues: the Castillo de San Marcos, Fort Caroline and Fort Matanzas. Their exploration of these sites is enriched by the manuscript’s revelations and their discovery of an odd skeleton. But the skeleton’s secrets are deadly. When a friend is brutally murdered, Curt and Scott realize that sinister events are unfolding, events they must forestall if they are going to save their own, and hundreds of other, lives. To make matters worse, time is running out quickly because a hurricane is bearing down on the east coast of Florida. As family and friends evacuate the region, Scott and Curt stay behind to rid the world of the skeleton and its malicious effects.

Their adventure strains Scott’s family life but strengthens his friendship with Curt. It includes deadly encounters with sword-yielding Huguenots, a ferocious fish, and a vindictive Timucua Indian. It includes the loss of friends and the initiation of new relationships (including a love interest for Curt). And, no surprise here, it results in the dramatic triumph of good over evil.

Gary Williams, a native of Florida, has skillfully woven together disparate threads from St. Augustine’s history, biblical archaeology and contemporary hurricane tracking and evacuation procedures into a compelling suspense novel. The book’s primary weakness is that it should have been more carefully edited. There are a few (but not many) errors in grammar and word selection that should have been corrected before the book went to press. On the other hand, the book has several strong points. Williams writes graphically yet avoids gore. He provides historical and scholarly information yet avoids slipping into the styles of either a textbook or tourist brochure. His characters are flawed but likeable; in other words, they’re like real people. He discusses religious ideas yet avoids being either preachy or disdainful; in other words, he displays respect for religion without descending into fanaticism. Overall, these strengths far outweigh the editorial weakness and I found it hard to put the book down until I reached the final page. This book is the first in a series and I’m looking forward to reading the sequel. Readers who enjoy suspense stories laced with history will enjoy this book.

Book Review: The Ghosts of Guantanamo Bay

Author: K.R. Jones
Publisher: Seacay Publishing
ISBN: 978-0-9790973

It is December 1958. In just a few weeks, Fidel Castro’s takeover of Cuba will be complete. Three casino owners who grew rich by cooperating with American businessmen have devised a plan to keep their wealth out of the Communists’ hands: they will hide their treasure on the United States naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

Skip ahead to July 1997. Marine Captain Adam Claiborne and his wife, Audrey, are moving to “Gitmo,” a naval base that, having once played an enormous strategic role in the Cold War, now operates at just a fraction of its former capacity. Adam and Audrey are charmed by the island’s long white beaches and clear blue skies, but it takes them awhile to adapt to the humidity and the clouds of flies that follow them everywhere. Moreover, while they quickly make friends at Gitmo, they also acquire some vicious enemies. Their professional and social situations become precarious as the base commander and his domineering wife grow to be their chief adversaries.

As Adam and Audrey become acquainted with Gitmo’s characters and culture, they also become engrossed in its history and mysteries. They uncover and decipher clues that enable them to resolve the truth behind several suspicious deaths. The deaths, in turn, are connected to the treasure that was hidden on the base nearly forty years earlier. And the treasure is connected to the personnel problems that have hounded Adam and Audrey since their arrival.

K.R. Jones accompanied her husband when he finished his service in the United States Marine Corps with a two-year tour of duty in Guantanamo Bay. Her intimate, first-hand knowledge of the locale is obvious in her meticulous descriptions of the terrain, the architecture, the climate – even the insects. Her knowledge of the United States Marine Corps is evident in her vivid descriptions of naval life and procedures – including how it feels to wear woolen dress uniforms in a tropical climate. Details like these are difficult for even the best fiction writers to fabricate. They are second nature, however, for an author who has lived the life about which she writes. Even though The Ghosts of Guantanamo Bay is a work of fiction, it is saturated with dozens of small realistic details that render it believable.

The Ghosts of Guantanamo Bay is a well-conceived, well-written story. Some of Jones’s characters are enchanting and others are infuriating, just like real people. Additionally, the social situations she describes are all too credible to anyone who has ever lived in a small community. A carefully constructed plot complements Jones’s deftly drawn characters. She does not leave any dangling clues or inexplicable characters stranded on the last page. When the story ends, the reader knows how all of the pieces scattered throughout the book fit into a coherent whole. My only quibble with the book is that it contains a handful of editorial errors. These can be quickly corrected, however, and I assume they will be.

Readers who enjoy whodunits will enjoy The Ghosts of Guantanamo Bay, a mystery tale that is uniquely suited to its exotic locale. Readers who enjoy this book also may want to be on the lookout for Jones’s next book, which is due to be published in the summer of 2007.

Book Review: The First Seal

Author: Sean Harris
Publisher: BookSurge, LLC
ISBN: 1-4196-4953-1

When archaeologists in New Mexico discover 16th century British armor hidden in a Navajo burial ground, Jim O’Neal joins the search to uncover the meaning of this unexpected find. Shortly afterwards, he learns that another artifact of much greater significance, an engraved stone tablet, was also discovered. Jim, needing to jumpstart his stagnant career, envisions these finds as his keys to academic acclaim. When an archaeologist is killed and Jim is framed for the murder, he realizes that, in order to prove his innocence, he must solve the mystery of the tablet and find its companion, which is buried in another site. His allies in this quest are Frank, a Navajo graduate student, and Marji, a mysterious newcomer whose interest in the discovery adds another layer of intrigue to the adventure.

Two other groups, in addition to Jim, Frank and Marji, want to claim the tablets for their own purposes. One group is determined use the tablets to set cataclysmic events into motion. The other, composed of descendants of the ancient Knights Templar, wants to ensure that the mysteries of the tablets remain unsolved and, in so doing, maintain international stability. All three groups follow trails across New Mexico and into the mountains of Colorado, where the ultimate showdown takes place in ancient Navajo territory.

A second story that develops throughout the book is the tale of how the tablets arrived in the New World. The main character of this story is Thomas Wyclyffe, a sixteenth century Templar Knight who has traveled from Britain to hide tablets. The parallel between the two stories is clever. The reader simultaneously follows the twenty-first century adventurers as they uncover the artifacts and the sixteenth century adventurer as he buries his goods. The transitions between the stories are smooth and both stories climax at appropriate points in their respective narratives.

Generally speaking, The First Seal is well-written and fun to read. The plot is clever and coherent. Harris draws on several historical strands, such as Navajo culture and lore and the story of the Knights Templar, to weave a very engaging story. The only plot weakness comes in the final scene, which unfortunately draws on a device that is quickly becoming a cliché in twenty-first century American literature. With regard to the book’s characters, most of them are interesting. Readers will empathize with the heroes and be intrigued by the demonic duo. The only character who seems to be cut from a cardboard mold is Jesse, the twisted twentieth century Templar Knight. The only other critical issue I have with the book is that it needs one more round of editing, as there are several points at which sloppy grammar becomes annoying. Since these shortcomings are few in number and generally minor in effect, I highly recommend The First Seal to readers who like adventure stories with historical flavors and I look forward to reading more of this author’s work in the future.