A densely packed and richly empathetic revamping of the dieting world.
A debut guide strives to help women break out of the dieting trap.
How many women have only been on one diet? This is the question with which Clegg, an eating-disorder therapist, opens her fast-paced look at the short- and long-term damage the dieting mentality can inflict on women, whether they’re looking to revitalize their lives or simply lose a few pounds. “Are you ready to go out, change your mind, and change your life?” the author asks. To facilitate this, she identifies 10 “mindsets” that can make dieting a deeply personal pitfall rather than the healthy course of action most women intend it to be. These include “The Deprivation Mindset,” “The Mean Girl Mindset,” and “The Shame-Based Mindset,” all of which tap into potentially unhealthy personal traits as part of their base line motivations. Clegg deftly lays out descriptions of each of these mindsets and the thinking they typify. For instance, “The Bureaucrat Mindset,” which can appeal to rule followers, the author characterizes as “Even though I want to eat this, and it makes sense to eat this, I can’t—because it is not on my diet.” And then there’s the extremely common “ABC Mindset,” which thinks: “If I diet, I can lose weight, and then my life will be perfect.” The author trusts the instincts of her readers to tell them if they’re in the grip of one of these toxic mindsets (“If you have an unhealthy pattern,” she writes with affecting simplicity, “you will recognize it because it makes you feel bad”). As she’s clarifying the difficulties, she’s also offering useful, multifaceted solutions to help her readers “reclaim a peaceful, balanced relationship with food.” At the root of the problem, she writes, is society’s set of body image standards that are patriarchal, unrealistic, and ultimately harmful to women’s physiques, minds, and souls. Clegg’s valuable, lucid book is a call to dig beneath these manipulations, to understand the why of dieting before looking at the how. Every reader who’s ever struggled with dieting or weight issues should find the author’s outlook captivating.
A densely packed and richly empathetic revamping of the dieting world.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 144
Publisher: BookLogix
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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