By Dr. Dean Ornish
Ballantine; $27; 386 pages
Feel better! Live longer! Lose weight! Gain health! The author is not shy about making front-cover promises about your healthy future — or about parading his substantial medical and public policy credentials (he's president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, Calif., and clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco). "People often think that advances in medicine have to be a new drug, a new laser or a surgical intervention to be powerful — something really high-tech and expensive," writes Ornish. "They often have a hard time believing that the simple choices we make in our lives each day — what we eat, how we respond to stress, whether or not we smoke, how much we exercise, and the quality of our relationships — can make such a powerful difference in our health, our well-being, and our survival." Ornish gives readers the tools to customize a lean, low-fat way of life. By the time you finish this lengthy, dense (albeit inspirational) book, you'll feel as though you have a medical degree, too.
— Andrea Sachs