The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) made Covey one of the high priests of secular self-help, and his advice has become a brand-name commodity, as his new adviser's title acknowledges. Families is published by Golden Books, provider of the inexpensive children's books most Americans know well, and the bargain-basement pictorial style of Golden's trademark product reappears in it. Fortunately, there are not all that many pictures, and there is nothing whatever wrong with Covey's advice. It begins with the master habit, Be Proactive, which he explains and applies to family dynamics by means of real-life anecdotes and, at the end of the chapter, a page of suggestions for sharing the information with other adults and teenagers and another for sharing with children. Covey follows the same format in the succeeding six chapters on the other habits: Begin with the End in Mind, Put First Things First, Think Win-Win, Seek First to Understand . . . Then to Be Understood, Synergize, and Sharpen the Saw. As those phrases attest, like other self-help gurus, Covey has some catchphrases specific to his method, and he also effectively appropriates pop-culture imagery (e.g., when he urges using the pause button to keep from making defensive remarks). No wonder he is popular: he is precisely in tune with the pop-cultural zeitgeist. (Reviewed September 15, 1997)