These new releases advise you on shrewd investing, living well, and maximizing your brain's power.

Don't Leave Your Brain Behind

Everyone jokes about those "senior moments," but what's really behind our tendency to forget things as we age? Why do older adults tend to wake up more often during the night? What's really happening to the brain during the onset and progression of Alzheimer's?

The answers to such questions are being shaped by an explosion of new findings from neuroscience, the study of the brain. Keep Your Brain Young distills some of the key findings from this new literature in a reader-friendly guide.

Co-authored by neuroscientists Guy McKhann at Johns Hopkins University and Marilyn Albert at Harvard Medical School, the book surveys a broad range of topics, including: learning and memory, nutrition and the brain, and medical problems such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and strokes. Each section provides appropriate background for the lay-reader and commonsense suggestions on how to keep the brain functioning in top form.

The book's treatment of memory--why it begins to fade and how to keep it sharp as long as possible--is especially strong. It describes the critical distinctions between old and new memories, how different areas of the brain process and store them, and how these facts relate to aging. (First-stage Alzheimer's patients, the authors point out, are often able to recall old memories quite accurately but are unable to easily learn or process new memories.)

So how do you preserve your memory as long as possible? The authors suggest a number of specific strategies and ways of organizing things for later recall. (One example: make a point of remembering something, such as directions, by repeating them to yourself out loud.) The book also gives the lowdown on herbal supplements believed effective against memory loss.

Keep Your Brain Young (296 pp.; $15.95; ISBN 0-471-43028-5) is published by John Wiley & Sons (www.wiley.com).

Where to Retire?

What would you get if you rated American towns and cities based on their appeal to retirees, looking at such factors as climate, transportation, cultural amenities, access to quality heath care, and other measures? Retire in Style crunches the numbers and comes up with...Boulder, Colorado as the top-rated place to retire in the United States.

Retire in Style, written by award-winning geographer Warren Bland, draws upon facts (such as the cost of living and climate data) and more-subjective "quality of life" measures to profile 50 affordable places to retire. Boulder won the top rating, but communities from Burlington, Vermont to San Luis Obispo, California, are reviewed in the handy guide. A helpful appendix provides addresses for numerous chambers of commerce you can write to for more information.

Retire in Style (281 pp.; $22.95; ISBN 0-9700908-0-3) is published by Next Decade Press (www.nextdecade.com).

Quick Reads

Smart Investing
The bear market has many retirees worried about how to protect their nest egg. Martin Weiss' The Ultimate Safe Money Guide is written for those over 50. Weiss offers strategies on when to buy and sell stocks, the pros and cons of annuities, and what to consider when buying insurance. The book is filled with helpful worksheets and charts comparing offerings and terms from different providers. The Ultimate Safe Money Guide (340 pp.; $14.95; ISBN 0-471-43047-1) is available from John Wiley & Sons (www.wiley.com).