Author: Biz India

Author: Mark Tungate Publisher: Kogan Page, 277 pages Book Review by Laxmi Chaandi This is a revealing book on the business of beauty, which Mark Tungate, a writer on advertising, branding, communication and marketing, says is a $350 billion industry. He looks at the beauty industry as it grew from infancy – from its origins with Queen Cleopatra in Egypt – to its evolution into a mammoth business worldwide, with its capitals in Paris in Europe and New York in the United States, to now having spread its wings into the emerging markets in Asia and South America and the rest of the world. Mark Tungate takes a look at numerous beauty brands and how the owners built their brands from Aesop to Zara and how many of them became household names, such as Avon, Body Shop, Chanel, Clinique, Dior, Elizabeth Arden, Estee Lauder, Helena Rubinstein, Lancome, L’Oreal, Max Factor, Nivea, Revlon and Shiseido, to name a few. I discovered as I read this book that the beauty industry, which includes, but is not limited to cosmetic products for the face, hair, hands, toes and other parts of the body, is a highly competitive one, with well-guarded secrets not only on the product formulas themselves but also on brand-building and marketing strategies. Does advertising of beauty products make us want to buy them even if we hadn’t thought we...

Author: Christy Morgan Publisher: Ben Bella Books – 269 pages Book Review by Laxmi Chaandi This book features an excellent and varied selection of dishes, with full-color photos, (many of which are full page in size) and easy-to-follow recipes with the amount needed of each ingredient, cooking directions and how many people the dish would serve. The author Christy Morgan, who is called “the Blissful Chef,” gives classes on cooking healthful foods, lectures, and provides personal chef services and private instruction as well. She also blogs about healthy living and shares her knowledge through videos. You might not know this: vegetarians do not eat meat but do eat other food coming from other non-human beings such as seafood, eggs, dairy products and even honey. Vegans exclude all such foods as well. Some vegans do not even eat biscuits, cakes and cookies if eggs are part of their ingredients. But even if you are not a vegetarian or vegan, you will find in this wonderful book more than 175 recipes for delicious, nutritious vegan meals for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner. In it are also healthful and delicious appetizers, soups and salads. This book contains an unbelievably large range of delectable vegetable dishes, whole grains and other rich sources of protein that develops muscles (not fat) and healthful desserts that do not load your body with sugar and fat. Before...

Author: Rajiv Malhotra Publisher: Harper Collins. 474 pages Book Review by Ramu Nakliba Rajiv Malhotra directly challenges the West in this book. He challenges the Western perspective of the world’s problems. He challenges the very way the West views India and its shortcomings in the economic, political and spiritual arenas. He cites dharma, the Hindu idea of right and wrong, of good and evil. He writes “I am simply using the dharmic perspective to reverse the analytical gaze which normally goes from the West to East and unconsciously privileges the former.” He points out that this different Eastern perspective reveals the problems faced by Western nations. Whereas when Western thinkers look at the problems themselves, their methods do not reveal the ‘blind spots’ that Easterners can see. He also asserts that India cannot be viewed as simply “a bundle of the old and the new, accidentally and uncomfortably pieced together, an artificial construct without a natural unity.” India has in recent years, been growing at much faster rates of growth of gross domestic product than the United States. We believe that its growth rates are vastly understated simply because it is almost impossible, at its current stage of development for its government to track the transactions of millions of companies and retail stores in the thousands of towns and villages around India. While India’s economic growth rate is understated,...

Author: David Gelber, MD Publisher: Ruffian Press. 187 pages Book Review by Nano Khilnani I revere surgeons as almost superhuman beings. They go through four years of college, likely another four more years of medical school, two years of internship, and probably another two to four years of residency. But the learning never stops – with reading medical journals, attending medical conferences and conventions and daily practice that reveals cases with new twists to the diseases and organ malfunctions. Keeping constantly updated on the latest developments in their medical specialty is a never-ending part of a surgeon’s life. I also regard them as the closest link to God for humans (besides religious persons)  because it is their knowledge and experience acquired over many years, their discipline and work ethic and dedication to their patients that enable them to keep us alive and avoid death. What else could be a nobler line of work? That is why I wanted to be a doctor when I was in high school. But somehow my life took a different turn, and I turned out becoming a writer. I suppose it does not only take a surgeon way-above-average intellectual capacity to keep learning from new cases, but also an unusually large-range emotional makeup that can withstand tremendous psychological highs and lows and stress on a daily basis. Saving a life gives ineffable satisfaction, but...

Author: Mike Whitney Publisher: AuthorHouse. 264 pages Book Review by Ramu Nakliba Those who are or were in the profession of selling or owning a small business know that one of the most difficult jobs out there is selling. For those who own businesses and are closely involved in selling their products and services, they know that upholding the quality of product or services, as well as providing an excellent overall customer experience is also part and parcel of selling, acquiring and retaining customers, the most critical part of a business. When all these responsibilities are taken together – selling, maintaining product-service quality and ensuring customers remain with your company, the pressure can be overwhelming. And when the business owner is doing all this in the midst of the severest recession the United States is in since the 1930s Great Depression, it is no surprise that nearly 1.6 million businesses filed for bankruptcies in 2010 (bankruptcy cases filed in federal courts for the 12-month period ending December 31, 2010, totaled 1,593,081, up 8.1 percent over the total 2009 bankruptcy filings of 1,473,675, according to the records of the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts). Selling services is a lot more difficult than selling products. When you’re selling services, you are selling a promise to the customer. If you do not deliver on your promise, even through no fault of your...