Author: Biz India

Author: Chris McLaughlin Publisher: Alpha – 331 pages Book Review by:  Laxmi Chaandi When you do not have a lot of outdoor space around your house, or if you live in a condo, townhouse or an apartment, how do you plant fruits, vegetables, herbs or flowers? And if you have adequate vertical space but very little ground, how do you ensure that your plants grow upwards instead of spreading around the sides horizontally? This is the book you need to approach all your small-space gardening problems and act as your guide. It is written by someone who has more than 30 years of experience on this subject. Chris McLaughlin is not just a gardener; she is an extensive writer on the subject. Chris has authored two other Complete Idiot’s Guides. One is on composting and the other on heirloom vegetables. Chris McLaughlin also writes for two magazines: The Heirloom Gardener and Urban Farm and contributes to www.VegetableGardener.com and www.BlissfullyDomestic.com. Her website is www.ASuburbanFarmer.com This book basically guides you to sow, tend and harvest your own delicious fruits, your healthful vegetables, your herbs to season your food and give it a little zing, and your ornamental plants to give your selected space a little color and liveliness. Obviously, the amount of space you have available will determine what you can plant. But often, people are not aware that some plants...

Author: Laura Ehrlich Publisher: Alpha Books – 162 pages Book Review by:  Laxmi Chaandi In this book by Laura Ehrlich, who has taught quilting in craft stores, adult schools and recreation programs for 35 years, you learn what tools and supplies you need; how to choose coordinating fabrics and calculate how much you need of each; tips on making templates; how to piece your blocks; the basics of batting, backing, and basting; and how to design, cut and stitch your quilts, make appliqués and add finishing touches. The book has got photos of finished quilts, as well as lists (with some drawings) of the tools of the trade you’ll need to make the quilts, such as graph paper, hoop, knitting wool, oak tag paper, pencils, pins, poster board, quilting needles, rotary cutter, rubber cement, rulers, seam rippers, sandpaper, scissors, thread, thimbles and other things. To help you get started with ideas on what to quilt, the book has got diagrams of numerous designs for you to choose from, whether you’re going to quilt with your hand only or a sewing machine or both. Like other Idiot’s Guides books, this one is organized into a few parts with a broad outline and subject matter, with each part having chapters pertaining to a portion of the subject matter. This book gives you an overview of its content with five parts. Part...

Author: Julieanna Hever, M.S., R.D., C.P.T. Publisher: Alpha Publishing – 332 pages Book Review by Paiso Jamakar Like other members of the family of The Complete Idiot’s Guides, this is a well-thought-out, well-organized, and well-written book. In this large book of over 330 pages that is reflective of a wealth of knowledge of the author, plant-based dietitian Julieanna Hever provides important information for the general public as well as special diets created for specific groups of people, such as for children, post-natal moms, senior citizens, overweight or underweight people, those engaged in strenuous sports, or those afflicted with certain ailments, such as cancer or heart disease, for example. This book contains 45 recipes for cooking nutritious plant-based meals, as well one week’s worth of sample menus for you to enjoy. It is delightful that the Foreword to this book was written by Dr. T.Colin Campbell, who along with his son Dr. Thomas Campbell authored the monumental bestseller on the relationship between nutrition and health, The China Study. The book is divided into four main parts. Part 1 explains the various healthful benefits of a plant-based diet. In Part 2, you learn how to live a plant-based life. It tells you of the myths that have been popularized, such as that plant foods cannot adequately fulfill a human body’s protein needs. Part 3 addresses special nutritional needs of specific groups...

By the editors and designers of Alpha books Publisher: Alpha Books – 158 pages Book Review by:  Paiso Jamakar This is a brain-teaser book. A sharp mind and a sharp eye is what’s needed to score high in finding the differences in the two photos presented. The number of changes between one picture and the next ranges from as few as seven changes to as many as  12 changes. The levels of difficulty range from Easy to Medium to Difficult to Advanced. Some 80 of the 100 puzzles puzzles are of this type – spotting the changes between one and another picture. There little boxes that you can check mark to keep tab of your progress. Each picture puzzle presented to you in the book informs you how many changes to look for between the two pictures and how much time you have to find all the changes. The other 20 puzzles are of the types described below. A second type of puzzles involves finding the one picture that is different among all the nine pictures presented. A third type of puzzle involves putting all the sections together in the right order to form a correct completed picture or mosaic. The answers to all the picture puzzles are at the end of the book. How sharp is your mind in spotting the changes in the 100 pictures presented in...

Authors: Gary Tilkin and Lita Epstein, MBA Publisher: Alpha (www.idiotsguides.com), 320 pages Book Review by Paiso Jamakar If you were residing in India and had invested 380,000 rupees in January 2008 to buy 10,000 U.S. dollars, and then sold your dollars and bought back rupees just about a year later in January 2009, you would have received around 520,000, as the chart here shows. In just one year, you would have made Rs.140,000 on your investment of  Rs. 380,000, a one-year return of a whopping 37 percent. And if were living in the United States watching U.S. dollar – Indian rupee exchange rates, and if you had bought 480,000 rupees in 2002 for US$10,000 and sold those rupees in 2008, you would have made a profit of 100,000 rupees or over $2,080 (100,000 rupees divided by 480,000). This is a return of nearly 21 percent in six years. Over a six-year period from 2002 to 2008 however, this averages only around a 3.5 percent return on your investment per year. But when U.S. banks these days are paying you only around one percent interest per year in a four-year certificate of deposit, this currency investment and trading example gives you much better yield. But the earlier example of a 37 percent return on your investment is much more lucrative. Yes, there are risks in currency trading. But if you...