Brookyn, NY – “Not Dick Whitney. Not Dick Whitney!” President Franklin D. Roosevelt exclaimed upon being told Richard Whitney, the long-time president of the New York Stock Exchange, was a criminal. Almost ten years earlier, on October 24, 1929, Black Thursday, as one newspaper’s headline put it the next day, “Richard Whitney Halts Stock Panic.” In 1934, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine, hailed as the leader of the securities industry in its fight against New Deal regulation. Whitney’s message was clear: the securities industry could regulate itself, and the federal government should stay out.
Impeccable Connections tells in rich detail the remarkable account of a well-connected gentleman’s extraordinary life and gives details of the banking and investment structure that precipitated the stock market collapse of 1929. As president of the NYSE, the story depicts how Whitney played his role even as he manipulated powerful and trusted friends. While Whitney’s name might be less common than Bernie Madoff, Ivan Boesky or Charles Keating, his rise to the top of Wall Street and fall to Sing Sing was all the more dramatic because he started at the top of the old-guard establishment.
Impeccable Connections: The Rise and Fall of Richard Whitney by Malcolm MacKay tells the fascinating story of one of the biggest scandals and scoundrels in American finance that resulted in the securities regulations that are in today’s headlines. Richard Whitney, a man whose family was ‘old Massachusetts’ but not wealthy or particularly distinguished, and whose father had risen from a clerk to a successful importer and banker. Richard followed his older brother George to Groton, Harvard, the college’s socially elite Porcellian Club, and Wall Street.
Known as ‘the voice of Wall Street,’ Whitney became the leading opponent of federal regulation of the securities industry, testifying in Washington, and speaking around the country (often broadcast on national radio). Power, money and social position were all his. A successful bond broker whose largest client was the Morgan bank, he lived in a grand manner. Imagine the nation’s shock when, in 1938, he was sent to Sing Sing for embezzling clients’ securities! Addressed by both guards and fellow prisoners as “Mr. Whitney,” befitting his social position, Whitney was released early in 1941 for good behavior, having served only 3 years and 4 months out of a 5 – 10 year sentence. After Whitney’s fall, the New Deal reforms of the securities industry became secure.
Whitney would live for more than three decades, surviving his loyal wife and supportive brother George, who made good on all Richard’s failed loans and fraud. After a few false starts in various businesses, he spent the remainder of his life as the treasurer of a local dairy owned by a Far Hills neighbor, living in a cottage on a local estate.
Malcolm MacKay skillfully recounts the life story of Whitney, a man who was known to be an insufferable snob and a scoundrel, and also offers remarkable insight into the psyche of the man himself. As a young man, Malcolm MacKay, who knew the much older Whitney personally, thought a great deal about Whitney’s actions, always wondering, ‘Why did he do what he did?’
Malcolm MacKay has written several local histories and articles published in leading newspapers and magazines. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School.
Available on Amazon.com and other online outlets Impeccable Connections: The Rise and Fall of Richard Whitney By Malcolm MacKay Publisher: Brick Tower Press (March 30, 2013) ISBN-10: 1883283620 ISBN-13: 978-1883283629
New York, NY – David M. Klein has an interesting and diverse background that provided him with the insight and experience to help others deal with their problems. His new book, Fire Your Shrink and Read This Book Instead (DMK Media Holdings) is a call to action to fix your life without getting bogged down by years of psychoanalysis.
David has run the gamut of life experiences; he has faced bankruptcy and foreclosure, endured multiple careers, job losses, a broken marriage, and an acrimonious divorce. He truly is ‘The Life Coach who has Lived!’ By drawing on these experiences, David has come up with realistic strategies and compelling ideas that embolden readers to take responsibility for their lives and learn how to fix their own problems.
For anyone not happy with their life for whatever reason – now is the time to take control and change it! All you need is the right mindset and the right set of tools. In Fire Your Shrink and Read this Book Instead, David offers practical, honest, true-to-life advice to make the necessary changes that directly affect your happiness. His action-based approach empowers you to accept your past and move forward by changing the way you think and perceive the world and the people around you.
Fire Your Shrink teaches readers how to take control, stop sabotaging relationships, overcome the need to meet expectations of others, break bad habits, stop overanalyzing everything in life, get rid of negative traits such as being critical and cynical, overcome fear of failure or change, accept others (flaws and all), and deal with the three cancers that destroy a happy and fulfilled life – blame, regret and hatred.
David M. Klein grew up in Queens, NY, the son of hard-working, middle-class parents who ingrained in him a strong work ethic. After living in California for a period of time, he returned to New York and attended NYU School of Law. For the next twenty years he had a career as partner at some of the world’s most prestigious law firms. The father of four children, it was while going through a bitter divorce that David learned many lessons about life that he has applied to the concepts in his amazing new book.
Please visit: www.davidmklein.com for more information on this insightful writer and dynamic speaker.
Available at fine bookstores, online outlets and the author’s website: Fire Your Shrink and Read This Book Instead By David M. Klein Publisher: DMK Media Holdings Inc. ISBN-10: 0988882000 ISBN-13: 978-0988882003
Houston, TX – Most of us have experienced at least one event in our life when we believed a guardian angel must have been watching over us. While we can’t see our guardian angels, the more we accept them as an unseen link to God – the more we are able to feel their presence, love and protection. The inspiration for The Angelic Letters Series by Henry Ripplinger (Pio-Seelos Books) came from a true and miraculous event in the author’s life; an event which he now refers to as ‘the angelic occurrence,’ that haunted him for years but later became the dynamic force that moved him to write his bestselling series.
The Angelic Letters Series is an epic, tenderhearted saga of love, angels and miracles, which is deeply inspiring and laced with pearls of wisdom. It follows the lives of Henry Pederson and Jenny Sarsky from the moment they meet as two fifteen year-olds in 1956, all the way to the present day over a span of six books. Having fallen in love instantly the moment they laid eyes on one another, the two’s dramatic bond is aided along the way by their guardian angels, creating a powerful spiritual connection between them that spans the tests of time.
While it is this spirit-filled love story that weaves and ties the series together, the real essence of the story is the life lessons revealed by its powerful lead characters, especially Mr. Engelmann − a profoundly wise and endearing, elderly man living out the word of God, who becomes Henry’s mentor and shares powerful insights with him about life. This award-winning series develops into a fifty-year spiritual odyssey that not only reminds readers of the existence of guardian angels but gives them the tools they need to face almost any situation that life throws at them. The Angelic Letters becomes an experience readers will never forget; deeply inspiring and glowing with moments of tenderness, a story that’s difficult to put down – with an ending that only angels could bring about…
A reader’s review beautifully captures Ripplinger’s intent; compelling storytelling that touches the hearts of readers emotionally, intellectually and spiritually: “…Thank you for such a wonderful read… like a warm blanket on a cold night, a meal with friends that one never wants to end, a beacon of light in the dark. I wanted to read and read-but at the same time I did not want the book to end. I fell in love with this book and the people inside. Wonderful. Wonderful!”
Through subtle yet powerful messages throughout the series the author shows how the life choices we make are crucial to our happiness and peace of mind and reminds us how guardian angels are our gift from God to watch over us, and of their untiring solicitudes to God on our behalf. Both author and artist, Henry writes from the heart, painting pictures with words that are so vivid and real that you will feel and visualize every aspect of your own life intertwined with the lives of his beloved characters.
Since the release of The Angelic Letters Series in 2010, Henry Ripplinger has enjoyed phenomenal success and his books have won numerous awards. Pewter Angels, book one, has won two Gold Medals; the Gold Medal Independent Publishers Book Award (IPPY) for Best Fiction in the Religious Category and in 2011 a second Gold Medal in the Living Now Book Awards for Most Inspirational Book of the Year. Another Angel of Love, book two, won the Silver Medal IPPY Award for Best Fiction in the Religious Category in 2012 and book three, Angel Of Thanksgiving, became a bestseller in less than two months of its release. All three books are bestsellers and readers anxiously await the fourth in the series, The Angelic Occurrence, being released May 1.
Henry Ripplinger’s vast abilities, combined with his lifelong experience and eclectic career as a high school teacher, guidance counselor, businessman, professional artist and novelist, prepared him to craft this inspirational Christian romance series and indirectly realize his aspirations of writing a self-development book. For more information on this prolific writer and celebrated artist, please visit his website at: www.henryripplinger.com.
Books by Henry Ripplinger are available at fine stores, online outlets, eBook and author’s website:
Pewter Angels $21.95 CDN 978-0-9865424-1-1
Another Angel of Love $21.95 ISBN: 978-0-9865424-2-8
Angel of Thanksgiving $21.95 ISBN 978-0-9865424-7-3
The Angelic Occurrence $21.95 ISBN: 978-0-9917102-2-5
Hampton, VA – No one wants to hear they have lung cancer, so when Dr. Carl O. Helvie was given this diagnosis 38 years ago and told he had six months to live he made the decision to fight back with something other than traditional medicine. Today, this healthy 80 year-old man takes no prescribed medications and is the longest living lung cancer survivor!
Host of his own radio health show, Dr. Helvie’s latest book, You Can Beat Lung Cancer: Using Alternative/Integrative Interventions (Ayni Books), offers priceless tips on alternative treatment for lung cancer and brings new hope for a future free from many debilitating illnesses/diseases.
Dr. Helvie used holistic natural interventions of supplements, herbs, enzymes, diet, prayer and meditation to overcome his cancer and prevent any recurrence! No small feat considering that today 89% of Americans over age 65 have some form of chronic illness and by age 75 can expect to have three chronic illnesses and be taking five prescribed medications daily!
Dr. Helvie’s book is based on his 60-year career in medicine and research, together with input from some of the leading medical and health practitioners in the field today. He is determined to show there is another way to overcome cancer other than surgery, chemotherapy and radiation that can have debilitating side effects. Helvie is not surprised by the recent findings of a team of researchers in Washington State who found, purely by accident, that chemotherapy actually fuels the growth of cancer cells, making it more difficult to destroy the second time around.
Dr. Carl Helvie is a registered nurse with two masters and a doctorate in public health and wellness. He has 60 years experience as a nurse practitioner, educator, author and researcher and is the recipient of numerous awards with listings in Who’s Who In American Nursing, Men of Achievement, American Men and Women of Science, just to name a few. Currently writing for a magazine, he has eight published books as well as contributed to others, and has published or presented internationally over 100 papers and articles. He developed and published a nursing theory that is used worldwide and has established a nursing center that provides primary care for homeless and low-income individuals and families. For more information, please visit: www.BeatLungCancer.net .
Available at fine bookstores or online outlets You Can Beat Lung Cancer: Using Alternative/Integrative Interventions By Dr. Carl O. Helvie Publisher: Ayni Books ISBN-10: 1780992831 ISBN-13: 978-1780992839
Virginia Beach, Va. – Virginia Hull Welch has an imagination as big as the Wyoming sky. Inspired by a road sign in that state, she concocted a back story to explain the intriguing name. Crazy Woman Creek (CreateSpace) is an inspirational western romance set in Wyoming Territory, 1880.
James Rose rode into the unforgiving darkness of the Wyoming prairie one stormy night and did not return. When the rancher’s horse is found tied to a tree on the banks of the icy North-East Creek three days later, his wife Lenora insists her beloved is too capable a horseman to slip and fall into a rushing creek. But everyone in the little town of Buffalo believes he drowned.
Not quite everyone. To Deputy Luke Davies, the beautiful widow’s account of the events that night provokes more questions than answers. Why is she so sure her husband did not perish in the wilderness? Why is she vague about the events that happened just before he rode off? What is she hiding? And who has been sneaking onto her property at night to harass her, and why?
As time passes, the absence of a body creates difficulties for Lenora; her homestead is threatened and she becomes the chief suspect in the investigation of her husband’s disappearance. As wild stories of murder and madness circulate, Luke and Lenora realize their growing attraction for one another. But without a body, Luke is frustrated by desire and Lenora is tortured by doubt. Is she truly a widow, or is her angry husband trying to teach her a lesson as some believe?
Virginia Hull Welch’s nonfiction book, What to Do When the Blessings Stop – When God Sends Famine is due to be published in summer 2013. Her first book, The Lesson, a romantic comedy based on a true story, has earned rave reviews from Amazon readers. Her fourth book and second nonfiction, The Hiss from Hell Only Women Hear, Is It Tradition or Is It Truth? will be released late 2013.
Ginny lives in Virginia Beach with her husband where she works as a full-time marketing writer and editor and attends New Life Providence Church. She volunteers at Union Mission Ministries of Norfolk, helping homeless women find work by writing their résumés.
Allen, TX – From the award-winning author recognized as one of the country’s top three romance writers comes a rich new saga of love and intrigue. Passions run high and readers can almost feel the grit whipped up by the torrid winds of Dust Devil by Parris Afton Bonds.
In the fierce and untamed Territory of New Mexico, the most fierce and most untamed made love and history. Those lovers were Rosemary, the willful Irish lass who harbored a forbidden love and claimed the Cambria empire as hers forever…Lario, the handsome Navajo who claimed revenge on Rosemary and then claimed her for his own … Grant, who wielded the Territory’s political power and who would bind Rosemary’s fate with his…Stephanie, beautiful heiress of the Cambria empire, who loved wildly and paid for that love…and lastly, decades later, Chase the Wind, destined to rule the white man’s world and every woman’s heart.
Dust Devil moves through the Navajo’s Long Walk, when the U.S. government in an attempt at ethnic cleansing herded the Navajo into New Mexico’s Fort Sumner, to the Death March for a Navajo Code Talker captured by the Japanese on Bataan during World War II. Although the Native Americans gave their lives fighting for our country during World War II, tragically, they were not given the franchise, allowed to vote, until 1948.
The mother of five sons and the author of 37 published novels, Parris Afton Bonds is the co-founder of Southwest Writers Workshop and cofounder and first vice president of Romance Writers of America. Bonds attributes her fascination with historical romances and, in particular, Native Americans, to authors she had read as a child and young woman such as Frank Yerby, Rafael Sabatini, James Fennimore Cooper, Dale Van Every, and Edna Ferber. The plight of the Native American as described in the novel Romana by Helen Hunt Jackson, most influenced Parris Afton Bonds.
Declared by ABC’s Nightline as one of the three best-selling authors of romantic fiction, the award-winning Parris Afton Bonds has been interviewed by such luminaries as Charlie Rose and featured in major newspapers as well as published in more than a dozen languages. She donates her time to teaching creative writing to both grade school children and female inmates.
The Parris Award was established in her name by the Southwest Writers Workshop to honor a published writer of outstanding generosity who contributes time and talent to other writers. Prestigious recipients of the Parris Award include Tony Hillerman and the Pulitzer nominee Norman Zollinger.
Lake Lure, NC – Sales training and coaching strategies that focus primarily on behaviors aren’t adequately preparing sales professionals to connect, persuade and win in today’s tough environment. The reason, according to Herrmann International research, is that selling approaches and buying decisions are rooted in thinking, not behaviors. By embedding thinking into development strategies, companies will be able to improve sales training results and generate higher revenue, account penetration and client loyalty levels.
“Our more than 30 years of research on the brain and business performance has shown that thinking styles impact how we process information, how we buy and sell, what we pay most attention to, and how we make decisions,” says Ann Herrmann-Nehdi, CEO of Herrmann International. “Behavioral approaches can help the salesperson manage a sales conversation in an efficient way, but they don’t reflect the mental processes that actually drive sales activities or purchasing decisions, so they don’t provide the complete set of tools to be persuasive, effective and responsive. Particularly in today’s demanding world, many external factors are impacting behavior; thinking is what’s constant.”
Herrmann-Nehdi says the company advises clients to look at the entire sales process for opportunities to maximize efforts through a framework of thinking, including:
• Mapping the mental demands of the sales job to find alignment and uncover gaps • Using thinking preference data to maximize time spent in training • Optimizing coaching strategies by taking into account the thinking styles of the manager/coach and the salesperson • Providing training and tools to uncover customer thinking preferences and communicate, present and sell with the customer in mind
“The best part is this doesn’t require throwing out everything you’re already doing or slowing down the process,” Orin Salas, VP of Sales at Herrmann International, adds. “It actually helps salespeople get prepared, proficient and closing larger, more profitable deals on a faster pace. In fact, one client reduced training time from 24 months to 7 using this approach. It also allows the salesperson to focus their attention in the most high-value way, which is especially important in today’s noisy, pressure-filled environment.”
Herrmann International has compiled best practices, research and tips for using a thinking-based framework to improve sales performance in the free white paper, Wired for Sales: Supercharge Sales Professionals’ Performance in a Demanding World. The paper explores the reasons traditional behavior-based sales training comes up short, the role thinking preferences play in buying decisions and selling approaches, tips for assessing and applying thinking to sales development strategies, and techniques to quickly build the proficiency and performance sales professionals.
The originator of the Whole Brain® system and the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument® (HBDI®) thinking styles assessment, Herrmann International works with organizations around the world to help them put their full brainpower to work to outthink, outpace and outperform the competition. The company’s Whole Brain® Thinking framework, which includes a variety of learning solutions, facilitation resources, job aids and business tools, has helped nine out of 10 of the Fortune 100 harness their collective intelligence to sell more, spend less, innovate faster, and develop and retain the best talent.