Techniques for Women of Color

Beauty From the Inside Out, a Guide for Black Women by La Verne Powlis (Doubleday: $19.95).

La Verne Powlis, a former magazine beauty and health editor, provides a multitude of tips and techniques specifically targeted to black women (modern variations on the “warm pressing” of hair, for instance, or the latest on pigmentation disorders that are more apparent on dark skin).

The author has carefully balanced advice from university professors such as Alvin Poussaint (an associate dean of the Harvard University School of Medicine) as well as celebrities such as Patti LaBelle. The result is authoritative, readable and occasionally entertaining.

The reader should be warned, however, that a good portion of the book consists of standard, common-sense health and beauty advice that applies to women of all colors and may already be quite familiar.