In My TBR Stack:

50 Ways to Love Wine More: Adventures in Wine Appreciation
by Jim Laughren, CWE
Crosstown Publishing
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Do you enjoy wine, but wish you knew more about it? Are high prices, confusing choices, and snobby attitudes a constant turn-off?

Jim Laughren, Certified Wine Education, agrees. The award-winning author of A Beer Drinker's Guide to Knowing & Enjoying Fine Wine is back, and guiding readers ton a stress-free, fun-filled journey through the spectacular world of wine. 

You’ll find no snobbery or elitist attitudes here. Laughren believes in the joys of wine and the pleasures of tasting, sharing, and exploring. His obvious love of wine shines through on every page. In 50 Ways to Love Wine More you will learn new and exciting approaches to wine appreciation.

• Plan the coolest wine vacations ever,
• Discover fabulous (bargain) wines from around the world,
• Savor some wacky food and wine pairings… Why not!
• Get beyond the cork versus screwcap conundrum.

            

And so much more!

Wine lovers find the author’s easy-going style a pleasure to read. There is no more enjoyable way to expand one’s knowledge of wine tasting or wine buying, wine growing or winemaking, wine regions, countries, or history than in the delightful and enlightening pages of 50 Ways to Love Wine More.

If you want your own personal Certified Wine Educator to show you around, to reveal wine’s inside secrets, the best and easiest ways to learn and share, and fifty very specific techniques to enhance your understanding and appreciation of wine, you’ll love this open, heart-felt celebration of all things vinous.

In My TBR Stack:

Ed Sheeran; Memories We Made — Unseen Photographs of My Time with Ed
by Christie Goodwin
Harper Design
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

When photographer Christie Goodwin first met Ed Sheeran he was unknown and unsigned— just a young busker trying to make it big. But she could see something special in Ed. Goodwin agreed to photograph him for free to help him on his way to the top.

That was the beginning of a 10-year collaboration, with the two crossing paths as Ed rocketed to fame—a story told here, through Goodwin's camera.

Ed Sheeran: Memories We Made shares these images and stories for the first time in a stunning collection of rare and unseen photographs charting Ed Sheeran's rise to global superstardom. Featuring a foreword and additional photo captions by Ed's father, John Sheeran, this is an up-close and intimate view of the singer who has captivated audiences around the world.

In My TBR Stack:

Driven: A Daughter's Odyssey
by Julie Heldman
Trade Paperback

From the book website:

In the mid-20th century, the Heldmans were tennis royalty. Julie was a volatile and gutsy tennis star, twice ranked number 5 in the world. Her mother Gladys was broadly admired for her unique magazine, World Tennis, and for engineering the women’s tennis revolution. No one guessed that Gladys’s hidden emotional abuse was the source of Julie’s powerful drive.

Driven is a highly readable insider’s account of a pivotal time in women’s tennis history; an in-depth look at Gladys’s complex character; and the revealing story of Julie’s interior journey, both on and off the court.

In My TBR Stack:

Let Go of Emotional Overeating and Love Your Food: A Five-Point Plan for Success
by Arlene B. Englander
Rowman & Littlefield
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Let Go of Emotional Overeating and Love Your Food is for anyone who would like to eat whatever they like, yet stop just at the point of satisfaction without overeating. 

Written by a Columbia University trained psychotherapist and former emotional overeater, Let Go of Emotional Overeating and Love Your Food offers psychologically sound techniques for recognizing the symptoms of emotional overeating and methods for addressing it in ways that are both effective and enjoyable. 

Readers will learn how to become aware of the difference between eating in a healthy way and eating emotionally – neither to satisfy hunger, nor for enjoyment, but in a desperate attempt to distract oneself from painful thoughts and feelings. Diets don’t work for people who eat through their emotions. Instead, learning to recognize the stressors that lead to emotional eating and to address those tensions through other methods besides eating is the goal. When we handle stress well away from the table, we’re free to relax and really savor our food when we choose to eat. Proven techniques like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) are presented in an innovative, easy-to-remember way. Learning to eat mindfully, for health and enjoyment, becomes the goal, and Arlene Englander walks readers through table techniques designed to make mindful eating easier, habitual, and ultimately second-nature. 

Allowing for both fun foods and healthy foods, Englander’s approach emphasizes eating healthfully and being aware of best practices and the behavioral objectives of coping with stress, exercising regularly, mindful eating, good nutrition and hydration, and controlling overeating situations. She addresses late-night eating, parties, vacation, and other situations where overindulging may be a risk. She concludes with a prescription that is meant to last so that readers can love their food for a lifetime.

In My TBR Stack:

The Infinity of Roads: Suns of the End Volume Three
by Robert Gryn
Trade Paperback

From the author's website:

Thus spoke Ondranapastha; “I see the cold place between two fires, where the last general prays. She is blind, but to what I cannot tell.

“I see the shining graveyards, where the young king takes up his weapon against the gods. He sees clearly all before him but is blind to his own desire.

“I see beyond the cosmos proper, where in places only divine beings used to tread, the dead servant of forgotten gods walks again. He is blind to those who would betray him.

“I see your sister walking in darkness. She sees her palace in flames. But she is blind to the loss of her heart’s longing.”

In My TBR Stack:

Barons of the Sea: And Their Race to Build the World's Fastest Clipper Ship
by Steven Ujifusa
Simon and Schuster
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

There was a time, back when the United States was young and the robber barons were just starting to come into their own, when fortunes were made and lost importing luxury goods from China. It was a secretive, glamorous, often brutal business—one where teas and silks and porcelain were purchased with profits from the opium trade. But the journey by sea to New York from Canton could take six agonizing months, and so the most pressing technological challenge of the day became ensuring one’s goods arrived first to market, so they might fetch the highest price.

“With the verse of a natural dramatist” (The Christian Science Monitor), Steven Ujifusa tells the story of a handful of cutthroat competitors who raced to build the fastest, finest, most profitable clipper ships to carry their precious cargo to American shores. They were visionary, eccentric shipbuilders, debonair captains, and socially ambitious merchants with names like Forbes and Delano—men whose business interests took them from the cloistered confines of China’s expatriate communities to the sin city decadence of Gold Rush-era San Francisco, and from the teeming hubbub of East Boston’s shipyards and to the lavish sitting rooms of New York’s Hudson Valley estates.

Elegantly written and meticulously researched, Barons of the Sea is a riveting tale of innovation and ingenuity that “takes the reader on a rare and intoxicating journey back in time” (Candice Millard, bestselling author of Hero of the Empire), drawing back the curtain on the making of some of the nation’s greatest fortunes, and the rise and fall of an all-American industry as sordid as it was genteel.

On My Radar:

The Dean: Best Seat in the House
by Rep. John D. Dingell with David Bender
Harper
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Democrat John David Dingell served in the U.S. House of Representatives for fifty-nine consecutive years, from December 13, 1955 to January 3, 2015—the longest tenure of anyone in Congressional history. The son of a Congressman, Dingell worked in his father’s office from childhood and became a house page in 1938, when he was just eleven years old. Retiring from Congress at eighty-nine, he has witnessed some of the most significant events that have shaped our nation and the world. 

In The Dean, Dingell looks back at his life at the center of American government and considers the currents that have reshaped our Congress and America itself, from his childhood memories of wartime Washington during the FDR administration, through the Reagan Revolution, to the election of the first black president, Barack Obama. 

Rife with a wisdom that literally only Dingell can possess, The Dean is the inspiring story of some of the greatest congressional achievements, of which Dingell was an integral part, and of the tough fights that made them possible. Dingell offers a persuasive defense for government, explaining how it once worked honorably and well—in defeating Hitler, sending us to the moon, ending segregation, and providing for the common good of all our citizens. He argues that to secure our future and continue our progress, we must work together once again—lessons desperately needed today.

In My TBR Stack:

Space of Love: Understanding the Power of Thought and Wisdom in Living With Autism
by Gayle Nobel
Nite Owl Books
Trade Paperback

For people caught up in emotionally difficult situations: If you feel like you have reached the end of your rope and have run out of solutions Space of Love offers an energizing lifeline and a brand new perspective on how to approach many personal concerns. This book centers the reader. It offers hope and inspiration. Anytime a person needs an emotional pick-me-up, it provides a soothing surge of self empowerment. Like healing meditation, you'll find yourself wanting to read this book again and again. The author posits: What if the stress and strain you feel is not coming from the challenges or the obstacles in your life, condition of autism, or your child’s or another loved one's behavior? The answer to that question—a profound understanding of the human experience—is the gift of Space of Love. 

This highly acclaimed book is based on Gayle Nobel’s 34 years of coping with the challenges of raising an autistic son combined with her more recent insights as a transformative life coach. Through deeply honest, inspiring personal stories and insightful poetry, Gayle takes the reader on an amazing journey as she explores the power of thought, resilience, wisdom, innate well-being, and most of all love in creating the experience of living with autism. Space of Love is not just for those touched in some way by autism, but for anyone seeking to discover and release their own natural resilience. Readers may shed a few tears, smile, and walk away with a totally new awareness of the human experience after reading Space of Love. Gayle teaches us helpful life lessons, shining new light on some of the sensitive or daunting situations we all experience such as feeling out of control, the inability to accept change, make tough decisions or overcome fear of the future. Gayle asks the difficult questions and shares answers that could serve as a catalyst to releasing fresh insights about autism and other life experiences that affect us all.

In My TBR Stack:

Open Mic Night in Moscow: And Other Stories from My Search for Black Markers, Soviet Architecture, and Emotionally Unavailable Russian Men
by Audrey Murray
William Morrow
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

The raucous and surprisingly poignant story of a young, Russia-obsessed American writer and comedian who embarked on a solo tour of the former Soviet Republics, never imagining that it would involve kidnappers, garbage bags of money, and encounters with the weird and wonderful from Mongolia to Tajikistan.

Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Siberia are not the typical tourist destinations of a twenty-something, nor the places one usually goes to eat, pray, and/or love. But the mix of imperial Russian opulence and Soviet decay, and the allure of emotionally unavailable Russian men proved strangely irresistible to comedian Audrey Murray.

At age twenty-eight, while her friends were settling into corporate jobs and serious relationships, Audrey was on a one-way flight to Kazakhstan, the first leg of a nine-month solo voyage through the former USSR. A blend of memoir and offbeat travel guide, this thoughtful, hilarious catalog of a young comedian’s adventures is also a diary of her emotional discoveries about home, love, patriotism, loneliness, and independence.

Sometimes surprising, often disconcerting, and always entertaining, Open Mic Night in Moscow will inspire you to take the leap and embark on your own journey into the unknown. And, if you want to visit Chernobyl by way of an insane-asylum-themed bar in Kiev, Audrey can assure you that there’s no other guidebook out there. (She’s looked.)

In My TBR Stack:

Thrown Upon the World: A True Story
by George Kolber and Charles Kolber
Archway Publishing
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

It is 1938 when the Kolbers, affluent Viennese Jews, flee their country for Shanghai after its annexation by the Nazis. Eva and her daughter take the Trans-Siberian Railroad through war zones where they must confront border guards and Japanese imprisonment. Meanwhile, her husband, Josef, and their twin sons travel by ocean liner, hiding valuables in crates.

Similarly in China, the politically powerful Gan Chen family finds their lives upended by Japanese invaders. Forced to abandon their estate, the family seeks refuge in Shanghai. While the families adapt to their new lifestyles during the war, their children meet. Walter Kolber is a handsome violinist; Chao Chen is a gifted pianist.

After a forbidden romance blossoms, Chao Chen discovers she is pregnant. Without familial blessings, the lovers marry in December 1946 and head with their newborn to a refugee camp in Austria. As Chao Chen grapples with language and cultural barriers, the family is met with turmoil and tragedy. Now only time will tell if they will survive their troubles to start a new life in the United States.

A remarkable true story, Thrown upon the World tells the tale of two families brought together during World War II in Shanghai and the twist of fate that split them apart.

In My TBR Stack:

Long Live Freedom! Traute Lafrenz and the White Rose
by Peter Normann Waage
Translated by DiMari Bailey
Cuidono Press
Trade Paperback

The world had been at war for three years in 1942 when a group of students in Munich began to distribute leaflets challenging the German people to resist the Nazis. Himmler personally ordered the arrest and execution of those responsible. Traute Lafrenz was part of that circle, which came to be known as the White Rose. She was arrested but, unlike her friends Hans and Sophie Scholl, escaped execution. Decades later, in conversation with Peter Normann Waage, she recounts the story as she experienced it, from education to friendships to activism. Blending memoir, group biography, and philosophical insight, Waage introduces the key players in the order Lafrenz met them, building and circling to capture the atmosphere, the influences, the intellectual and spiritual seeking, and the friendships that inspired this group's message of resistance and hope. Most of all, Lafrenz and Waage explore how these young people developed the intellectual strength and moral courage to respond to the terror that was the Nazi regime. Previously published in Norway and Germany, this book is a unique addition to the White Rose story, offering a new voice and a deeper understanding of how a few people could have such an impact during very dark times. 

On My Radar:

Bring It On Home: Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin, and Beyond — The Story of Rock's Greatest Manager
by Mark Blake
Da Capo Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Peter Grant is the most famous music manager of all time. Often acknowledged as the “fifth member of Led Zeppelin,” Grant’s story has appeared in fragments across countless Zeppelin biographies, but none has explored who this brilliant and intuitive manager yet flawed and sometimes dangerous man truly was. No one has successfully captured the scope of his personality or his long-lasting impact on the music business. Acclaimed author and journalist Mark Blake seeks to rectify that.

Bring It On Home is the first book to tell the complete uncensored story of this industry giant. With support from Grant’s family interviews with Led Zeppelin’s surviving band members, and access to Grant’s extensive archive and scores of unpublished material, including his never-before-published final interview, Blake sheds new light on the history of Led Zeppelin and on the wider story of rock music in the 1960s and ’70s.

Full of new insights into Grant’s early life as an actor, wrestler, and road manager for rock ‘n’ roll pioneers Chuck Berry and Little Richard; the formation of Led Zeppelin; his seclusion following the demise of the band; and his recovery from substance abuse, Bring It On Home reveals a man who, after the extraordinary highs and lows of a career in rock ‘n’ roll, found peace and happiness in a more ordinary life. It is a celebration, a cautionary tale, and a compelling human drama.

In My TBR Stack:

The Unconventional Thinking of Dominant Companies: The New Formula for Market Domination

by Jim Bramlett

Trade Paperback

ISBN 9781719211789

From the author's website:

There are good companies.  There are great companies.  And then there are a few dominant companies.  Ever wonder the real secret behind Amazon’s success?  They are much more than an e-commerce company and they think differently than most companies.  Do you wonder why Uber loses money and yet has a market valuation in excess of $50 billion?  Have you ever considered why there isn’t a strong competitor to Netflix and its excess of 120 million subscribers?

These companies dominate their space and they think alike, yet differently than most other companies.

In The Unconventional Thinking of Dominant Companies you will learn:

• Dominant companies start with the customer and giving them a great experience and engineer backwards
• Dominant companies use a formula, or it’s equivalent, called the Hassle Quotient
• Dominant companies understand human psychology. They understand the most valuable commodity is time and not money.
• Dominant companies have a focus and drive to make it abundantly easy for a customer to engage them.
• Dominant companies save customers time, effort and money compared to their competitors and they provide an outstanding customer experience.
• Dominant companies do not trade-off price for customer experience
• Dominant companies constantly increase internal efficiencies so they can offer more competitive pricing and not necessarily put those savings on the bottom line
• Dominant companies constantly talk to and listen to their customers to improve the score on their formula
• Dominant companies don’t think about the next Quarter’s financial report, but the long-term growth of the business
• Dominant companies measure more than financial results. They are obsessed with customer traction and churn, and then react accordingly.

Many people think that a company only need offer a great product or service, treat their customers well, make money and everything will be good.  Conventional companies think that way and might perform okay.  Dominant companies think differently.

Anyone interested in business, starting a business, operating a business, becoming an executive or taking their company to another level will find multiple examples and tips on how today’s unconventionally-thinking companies are taking their markets by storm.