Congratulations to Charles Gasparino! His book, The Sellout, has won the book category of the IRE Awards. The awards, given by Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc. since 1979, recognize the most outstanding watchdog journalism of the year.

 Charles Gasparino in an award-winning business journalist, senior correspondent for Fox Business Network, a columnist for the Daily Best and the New York Post, and a freelance writer for Forbes and other publications. He previously wrote for Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal, where he covered issues on Wall Street, including pension funds, mutual funds, and regulatory issues. His New York Times best-seller, The Sellout: How Wall Street Greed and Stupidity Destroyed America’s Dominance of the Global Financial System is the definitive book on the current financial crisis in the United States and the events that led up to what is now being called “The Great Recession.”

Former Ivy League admissions officer and author of Fat Envelope Frenzy: One Year, Five Promising Students, and the Pursuit of the Ivy League Prize, Joie Jager-Hyman shares a few tips for suriviving the process and managing expectations:

If you’re a typical potential Ivy League applicant, you’re probably feeling more than a little stressed by the looming application deadline of January 1st.  In addition to all that senior-year homework you have to do and all the clubs in which you have to demonstrate leadership, you now have to answer tricky essay questions like “Write page 217 of your 300-page autobiography” or “Tell us about a person who has influenced you in a significant way.”

As a former Ivy League admissions officer, I know that the process can be stressful and confusing. Unfortunately, getting into a top college isn’t like Buddhism or Alcoholics Anonymous–there aren’t 12 steps that you can follow to enlightenment. That’s why I’m often surprised by all the bad advice that’s floating around when it comes to gaining an edge in the college admissions process. There’s no secret formula for getting in, but understanding what doesn’t work will save you time, money and, possibly, some tears.

–Don’t take easy classes just to get good grades. Admissions officers don’t just look at your grades, they also look at the courses you took in high school. A straight-A student in easy classes is like a minor leaguer with lots of potential. You’ve never competed against the major leaguers–those terrific students who challenged themselves in high school–and you’re not sure how you’d do. Colleges can’t be sure either, which is why it’s really important to push yourself (within reason) when it comes to your high school coursework if you want to get into a top college.

–Don’t believe the hype when you hear admissions officers at competitive colleges tell you that SAT (or ACT) scores don’t matter. It’s no coincidence that the average SAT scores in the Ivy League are sky-high and climbing. They are a convenient tool with which to compare students from different high schools with inconsistent grading criteria. Plus, it’s hard to justify accepting an A student with mediocre SAT scores when you are faced with another A student who also excelled on all of his or her tests. Be sure to look at a college’s average SAT scores when trying to assess your chances of getting in.

–Don’t pass up the statistical advantage of being an Early Decision candidate. Several Ivy League colleges offer students this option whereby they may submit one application to their first choice school by early November (as opposed to the Jan. 1 deadline for Regular Decision) and agree to enroll if admitted. Studies have confirmed that colleges prefer to admit students who commit to matriculating. So, if you fall in love with a college before Nov. 1, show it your love by applying Early Decision–and it will be more likely to love you back.

–Don’t fool yourself into thinking that the “perfect” essay will make up for less-than-perfect academics. The college admissions process is primarily an academic evaluation and students’ personal characteristics are only considered after their scholastic performance has been appraised. In my experience, students tend to latch onto the essay because–unlike the three years worth of grades on your transcript–the essay is one of the few things you have control over during the fall of your senior year. Though the essay is important, it’s also important to have realistic expectations of what it can do for you. No one gets into an Ivy League college just because he or she wrote a good essay.

–Don’t ignore the role your teachers and guidance counselors play in putting together a great Ivy League application. Most Ivies ask for two teacher and one counselor recommendation, and these are read with great interest in the admissions office. Remember, the process is primarily an academic evaluation, so what your teachers and counselors say about you counts as least as much as what you say about yourself.

Finally, one more piece of unsolicited advice: Don’t stress about college so much that you ruin your high school experience. Driving yourself and everyone around you crazy won’t change any outcome other than possibly inviting a breakdown or burnout. Remember that college is just four years of a (hopefully) long life. So pace yourself. Many of you will get to do all this again when you apply for graduate school.

- Joie Jager-Hyman was a former Assistant Director of Admissions for Dartmouth College, where she worked from 2000-2002. During that time, she read and evaluated over one thousand applications for undergraduate admission and interviewed hundreds of prospective students. She also traveled extensively, speaking to large audiences of students, parents, and counselors about the undergraduate admissions process. She is a perfect speaker for high schools, parent groups, and corporations seeking to demystify the college admissions process.

Author of Waiter Rant Steve Dublanica and restaurateur Danny Meyer share insider information about the restaurant business on the Today Show with Kathy Lee and Hoda. Useful tips to keep in mind when you go out for your next meal. Although, I think I’d rather not know if my steak fell on the floor before it got to the table!

Danny Meyer is one of the world’s most successful and admired restaurateurs. He is the President of Union Square Hospitality Group, which includes Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, Eleven Madison Park, Tabla, Blue Smoke, Jazz Standard, Shake Shack, The Modern, Cafe 2, Terrace 5, and Hudson Yards Catering. Meyer shares the secrets of his success with his revolutionary – and winning – philosophy about “Enlightened Hospitality” in Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business.

Today Arianna Huffington announced that her first pick for the HuffPost Book Club is In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed by our very own Carl Honoré!

So how does a book about slowing down relate to the rapid-fire, fast-paced nature of the Huffington Post? Honoré writes, “speed can be fun, productive, and powerful, and we would be poorer without it. What the world needs, and what the slow movement offers, is a middle path, a recipe for marrying la dolce vita with they dynamism of the information age. The secret is balance: instead of doing everything faster, do everything at the right speed. Sometimes fast. Sometimes slow. Sometimes in between.”

And there possibly couldn’t be a better time to read this book and learn from Honoré’s message. We live in an age of speed, work faster, eat faster, read faster, and it’s causing us to burn out personally, culturally, economically. Carl explains that the current recession is a prime example of how our economy, based on fast growth, fast profits, cannot be sustained.

Slowing down will make us happier, healthier, and more productive. So, read the book and discuss here, let us know how you’ve benefitted from slowing down. Then invite Carl to speak to your community!

Carl Honoré is a best-selling author and journalist based in London. Since 1991, he has written from all over Europe and South America, spending three years in Buenos Aires along the way. His work has appeared in publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Economist, Observer, National Post, Globe and Mail, Houston Chronicle, and the Miami Herald. He is best known for his advocacy of the Slow Movement. A loose and international effort by the harried and haggard to decelerate the pace of their lives, the Slow Movement spans everything from telecommunications (slow email) and health care (slow medicine) to diet (slow food) and public space (slow cities). In addition to In Praise of Slowness, Carl is also the author of Under Pressure: How the Epidemic of Hyper-Parenting is Endangering Childhood.

Getting your kids ready to go back to school? Here are some tips from Marcella Moran, co-author of Organizing the Disorganized Child, for back to school shopping:

10 Tips to Survive Back to School Shopping: 

1. Bring the kids along to shop for the supplies.  I know that it’s easier to go out and buy the supplies alone but if you let your child pick out the items she likes, she is likely to feel more empowered and excited about going back to school.
2. Eat before you shop! Shopping and hungry agitated kids don’t mix.
3. Look for bargains but buy quality.  Everyone wants to save money, but sometimes cheaper means nothing more than replacing the items in a few months.
4. Look through last years supplies to see what you can salvage.
5. If your school didn’t give you a list of needed supplies, create a list of supplies your child will need for school and bring it with you to the store.
6. To avoid the crowds, shop during the week at dinner time.  I love the stores between 5:00 and 7:00.
7. Heavier plastic binders with rubber reinforced edges are great buys and will last the entire school year.
8. Thicker plastic 3 hole pocket folders are durable enough to last much longer than the cute, cardstock folder with the latest Disney character on the cover.
9. When looking at backpacks, make sure your child tries the bag on.  The shoulder straps should be thick and padded.  Avoid backpack with lots of pockets.  Many pockets lead to many lost items.
10. There’s always the option to shop on-line! Most stores are offering free shipping when you spend $50 or more.

 Marcella Moran MA, LMHC (Licensed Mental Health Counselor) is an educational consultant and licensed psychotherapist who specializes in ADHD. She works with her clients to develop personalized organizational systems that are based on her ability to assess a personal learning style. Moran’s clients have ranged in age from six years old to 60 years old, all working to reach their true organizing potential at school, work, and home.

Organizing the Disorganized Child: Simple Strategies to Succeed in School, the essential guide for parents and educators to help children get organized, goes on-sale tomorrow August 25, 2009!

America’s most innovative restaurateur and hospitality leader Danny Meyer proves again and again why he is at the top of the industry. Two of his most beloved restaurants, Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Cafe are consistently ranked #1 and #2 on the Zagat Survey for New York’s Most Popular Restaurant. His latest achievement, a FOUR STAR review (the highest accolade a critic from the New York Times can award) for Eleven Madison Park in the New York Times. Frank Bruni wrote:

“Eleven Madison Park, which opened in 1998, now ranks among the most alluring and impressive restaurants in New York.”

 Peek into an evening in the life of Eleven Madison Park:

(from Nick Cannell)

 It’s almost August, summer is beginning to wind down, and it’s hard to believe another school year is almost upon us! Marcella Moran, co-author of the upcoming Organizing the Disorganized Child, gives us a jump start with tips on how to organize your child for the new year: 

• Buy a backpack with thick cushioned shoulder straps and not many pockets.Lots of pockets make for LOTS of lost items. I happen to like the AirPack backpacks for Coreproducts.com. These bags have an inflatable pouch for added lumbar support.
• Buy thick plastic binders that have rubber reinforced edges. They come in a variety of colors and sizes. These can be found at Staples.
• Durable plastic 3 hole punch folders are great for lasting the entire school year.  Forget about the decorative, cardstock, 2 pocket folder that always seems to be in shreds by January. Buy stickers and decorate the plastic folder.
• If your child needs to be a Trapper Binder, only buy the one that has one zipper and opens like a binder. The more complicated trappers with multiple sections are too confusing for many kids. Papers will get lost.
• If your child has a difficult time getting up in the morning (there’s one in every family), try starting the waking process earlier. Your child may need more time to adjust from a sleep stage to a waking stage. To get her in the habit of getting up earlier before school begins, start the new schedule about a week prior to school starting. Sorry moms, I know how much you value your sleep!
• For children in middle school and high school, purchase a small file box so they can keep all important school papers in it, such as tests, quizzes, labs, homework, etc. Come mid terms and final exams, these papers will serve as great study resources.
• Talk about returning to school with your child. How is he feeling about going back to school? What are his expectations for the year? What would he have changed about last year’s school experience? If he is having any anxiety about returning, try to encourage your child to discuss his feelings about it.
• Post-it Calendars are fabulous tools for time management and “chunking” tasks/assignments. What I love most about the post-its is that when a child is finished with a task, they remove the post-it that listed the task, and throw it away. This works well for the tactile child!
• Colored flash cards are useful for memorization of vocabulary words, especially in foreign languages. Use pink cards for the feminine words and the blue cards for the masculine words.
• A must buy – Organizing the Disorganized Child, to be used as a reference throughout the school year.

Natural Marketplace Keynote Speaker Hank Cardello

“I had the privilege of giving the keynote address at Natural MarketPlace 2009 on July 10. The event brings together many of the natural and organic food pioneers and retailers that have fueled the rapid growth of organic and natural products. My talk focused on an inconsistent aspect of marketing these healthy foods: the industry has paid scant attention to solving the obesity crisis.

 I highlighted for the group that despite selling items such as antioxidant-laden dark chocolate, natural kettle potato chips and pomegranate juice, these foods contained as much – and even more – calories than their conventional counterparts. The industry, despite its intentions to help people live longer and healthier lives, was actually contributing to the nation’s overweight and obesity crisis.

To provide guidance, several approaches were highlighted to show how the industry could market lower-calorie foods and make more profits. A challenge was also issued to take up the mantle of childhood obesity by creating child nutrition sections and by offering healthy lunch boxes to take to school.”

- Hank Cardello, author of Stuffed: An Insider’s Look at Who’s (Really) Making America Fat.

“It’s time to take back our country. Now. It’s that simple. It’s that urgent” 

So begins Dick Morris and Eileen McGann’s latest book.

Whether or not you agree with him, you certainly want to know what he has to say. Conservative Political Analyst Dick Morris‘ Catastrophe shot to #1 on the New York Times Best Sellers list and remains there for the second week.

Can’t decide if you should read it? To make things easy, he’s created a series of videos in which he summarizes the topics in what he calls the most important book he’s written. Here’s the first one:

Watch more here.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America’s Health recently released a new report of the nation’s annual obesity rankings. As reported on the Today Show this morning, it was disturbing news – not a single state experienced a decline. While Meredith Vieira and Dr. Nancy Snyderman felt there was no way out of this rut, Hank Cardello has a different take and fresh solutions to this national weight problem. Consumers have tried new diets and failed, legislative interventions (like food taxes) have also failed, so who’s to blame? Hank suggests the responsibility should not be on the consumer, but rather on the food industry to provide healthier options.

At the Southern Obesity Summit, Hank discussed some healthy alternatives that will keep the profit hungry food industry happy and consumers healthier:

Hank Cardello is a Food Executive Turned Anti-Obesity Advocate and Authority on Responsible Capitalism. He is also the author of Stuffed: An Insider’s Look at Who’s (Really) Making America Fat.