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

MAGIC WORDS

WHAT TO SAY TO GET YOUR WAY

Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.

Want to get ahead in business? Consult a dictionary.

By Wharton School professor Berger’s account, much of the art of persuasion lies in the art of choosing the right word. Want to jump ahead of others waiting in line to use a photocopy machine, even if they’re grizzled New Yorkers? Throw a because into the equation (“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”), and you’re likely to get your way. Want someone to do your copying for you? Then change your verbs to nouns: not “Can you help me?” but “Can you be a helper?” As Berger notes, there’s a subtle psychological shift at play when a person becomes not a mere instrument in helping but instead acquires an identity as a helper. It’s the little things, one supposes, and the author offers some interesting strategies that eager readers will want to try out. Instead of alienating a listener with the omniscient should, as in “You should do this,” try could instead: “Well, you could…” induces all concerned “to recognize that there might be other possibilities.” Berger’s counsel that one should use abstractions contradicts his admonition to use concrete language, and it doesn’t help matters to say that each is appropriate to a particular situation, while grammarians will wince at his suggestion that a nerve-calming exercise to “try talking to yourself in the third person (‘You can do it!’)” in fact invokes the second person. Still, there are plenty of useful insights, particularly for students of advertising and public speaking. It’s intriguing to note that appeals to God are less effective in securing a loan than a simple affirmative such as “I pay all bills…on time”), and it’s helpful to keep in mind that “the right words used at the right time can have immense power.”

Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.

Pub Date: March 7, 2023

ISBN: 9780063204935

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Harper Business

Review Posted Online: March 23, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023

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GREENLIGHTS

A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.

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All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.

“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.

A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.

Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020

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