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THE EATING DISORDER TRAP

A GUIDE FOR CLINICIANS AND LOVED ONES

A useful, inviting, and all-inclusive guide to eating disorders.

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A manual examines eating disorders and their treatments.

As Goldberg points out in her comprehensive new book, eating disorders are not only debilitating and dangerous, but also require expensive therapies and remain poorly explored in the medical field. She relates that current estimates reveal that eating disorders are either rising or being increasingly diagnosed, with the number of cases doubling “worldwide from 2013-2018 as compared to 2000-2006.” To begin her discussion on the disorders, the author first situates her topic in the broader landscape, reminding her readers that everybody needs fuel, and for some people, this simple requirement is infinitely complicated. “While many view eating as a recreational activity and a deserved pleasure,” she writes, “for some, it is seen as a scary experience and far from enjoyable.” Goldberg takes her readers through the basics, identifying the different types of eating disorders and their symptoms. The author then moves on to explain related issues, such as malnutrition and the strain it can place on the heart and many other organs and dehydration and its attendant complications. In short chapters appealingly illustrated by Baechle, Goldberg explains to her readers the anatomy, biology, and psychology of all aspects of eating disorders, simplifying and skillfully clarifying everything along the way. And refreshingly, all of this is presented in warm and supportive prose designed to give some encouragement to sufferers. “It is possible,” the author asserts, “to get out from under the thumb of an eating disorder or diet culture if only we become more educated in separating fact from fiction around the beliefs we learn from diet culture.” Readers who suffer from an eating disorder—or those who have loved ones who do—will find Goldberg’s book invaluable.

A useful, inviting, and all-inclusive guide to eating disorders.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: 978-1-63183-776-0

Page Count: 180

Publisher: BookLogix

Review Posted Online: April 23, 2020

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F*CK IT, I'LL START TOMORROW

The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.

The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.

“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”

The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.

Pub Date: April 20, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5

Page Count: 184

Publisher: Abrams

Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021

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THE LAWS OF HUMAN NATURE

The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.

A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.

Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”

The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.

Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5

Page Count: 580

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018

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