Bernie Siegel's previous bestselling books have helped thousands of people cope with and often overcome life-threatening illnesses. Now, in his newest book, Prescriptions For Living: Inspirational Lessons For A Joyful, Loving Life Siegel expands his pioneering mind-body principles to offer an approach for healthy people in the form of prevention-oriented lessons for living he calls "prescriptions." Taken on a regular basis, these prescriptions will help people deal with difficulties and create a life filled with peace, laughter, creativity, and above all, love.

     Recognizing that many cancer and AIDS patients are forced to grapple with their mortality and ultimately focus on what is truly important, Siegel shares what he has learned from these exceptional survivors and applies this wisdom to everyday living -- before tremendous adversity or illness strikes rather than after. Illustrated throughout with stories, personal anecdotes, and short parables, these prescriptions center around the importance of giving and receiving love (and its crucial role in maintaining health); the gift of family and children; forgiving wrongs; letting go of emotional pain; and living each moment fully present and aware.

     Among the many heart-warming, often humorous prescriptions in Prescriptions For Living are:

• Choose a Role Model to Guide You: Take one role model, as often as needed. Set aside a few minutes today to fill this prescription so you will have it handy when you need it. Think now about who your role models have been. What do they offer? Who else do you admire, and exactly what do you admire about him or her? Have your roster of role models ready and waiting to help you the next time you are perplexed.

• Groupet Therapy: Make an appointment with your pets. If you don't have pets, borrow a friend's, or better yet go to the ASPCA or your local animal shelter and pick up the fellow creatures you need to start a groupet. I guarantee you that whatever your pets are, they know some things about being happy and healthy that you have forgotten or never learned. So spend some time listening to and observing.

• Encourage the People You Love: Say good things about them to their faces and behind their backs. And don't worry about exaggerating. An overdose of love has no recorded adverse side effects.

• Think About Your Last 15 Minutes: If you knew you had only 15 minutes left to live, what would you do? If it is legal and won't harm you or anyone else, do it now, in the next fifteen minutes.

• Create: This is your creation prescription: choose one dose, every day, beginning today. Make up a song. Fix an engine. Plant some flowers. Build a climber for your cats. This prescription should be followed faithfully. Every single day, it is critical that you create something. You decide what it's going to be.

• Unearth Repressed Feelings: What memories or feelings have you erased from your mind but stored in your body? What is within you that needs to be brought forth? To discover what you have stored within you, spend time dreaming, drawing, visualizing, meditating and praying.

• Create Peace of Mind: What do you need to have peace of mind? Think of all the things that rob you of peace of mind and all the things that could provide you with it. Are your lists full of things that depend upon the actions of other people? If you decide your peace of mind is dependent on others, then you have two choices: you can accept that you will not have peace of mind very often, or you can decide to create peace within yourself by altering your life.

The Thirteen's 21st album What It Is . . . keeps alive a tradition established by Colgate's ambassadors of song with their earliest recordings -- something old, something new all delivered with verve and charm. Whether it's from

     Tears for Fears, the Beatles or Mills Brothers, the material gets the Thirteen treatment. Lovely moments and spiritedness coexist comfortably on What It Is . . . "Mood Indigo/East of the Sun" and "Suzanne" as well as "That Cat Is High" and "Me and the Boys" -- it's a tunk with better sound!