Calories And Corsets

Today we are urged from all sides to slim down and shape up, to shed a few pounds or lose life-threatening stones. The media's relentless obsession with size may be perceived as a twenty-first-century phenomenon, but as award-winning historian Louise Foxcroft shows, we have been struggling with what to eat, when and how much, ever since the Greeks and the Romans first pinched an inch. Meticulously researched, surprising and sometimes shocking, Calories and Corsets tells the epic story of our complicated relationship with food, the fashions and fads of body shape, and how cultural beliefs and social norms have changed over time. Combining research from medical journals, letters, articles and the dieting bestsellers we continue to devour (including one by an octogenarian Italian in the sixteenth century), Foxcroft reveals the extreme and often absurd lengths people will go to in order to achieve the perfect body, from eating carbolic soap to chewing every morsel hundreds of times to a tasteless pulp. This unique and witty history exposes the myths and anxieties that drive today's multi-billion pound dieting industry - and offers a welcome perspective on how we can be healthy and happy in our bodies.

For over two thousand years, attitudes to the menopause have created dread, shame and confusion. This meticulously researched and always entertaining book traces the history of 'the change of life' from its appearance in classical texts, via the medical literature of the eighteenth century, to up-to-the-minute contemporary clinical approaches. Its progression from natural phenomenon to full-blown pathological condition from the 1700s led to bizarre treatments and often dangerous surgery, and formalized a misogyny which lingers in the treatment of menopausal women today. Louise Foxcroft delves into the archives, the boudoir and the Gladstone bag to reveal the elements that formed the menopause myth: chauvinism, collusion, trial, error and secrecy. She challenges us to rethink absurd assumptions that have persisted through history - that sex stops at the menopause, or that ageing should be feared. It redresses the myths and captures the truths about menopause.

What does drug addiction mean to us? What did it mean to others in the past? And how are these meanings connected? In modern society the idea of drug addiction is a given and commonly understood concept, yet this was not always the case in the past. This book uncovers the original influences that shaped the creation and the various interpretations of addiction as a disease, and of addiction to opiates in particular. It delves into the treatments, regimes, and prejudices that surrounded the condition, a newly emerging pathological entity and a form of 'moral insanity' during the nineteenth century. The source material for this book is rich and surprising. Letters and diaries provide the most moving material, detailing personal struggles with addiction and the trials of those who cared and despaired. Confessions of shame, deceit, misery and terror sit alongside those of deep sensual pleasure, visionary manifestations and blissful freedom from care. The reader can follow the lifelong opium careers of literary figures, artists and politicians, glimpse a raw underworld of hidden drug use, or see the bleakness of urban and rural poverty alleviated by daily doses of opium. Delving into diaries, letters and confessions this book exposes the medical case histories and the physician's mad, lazy, commercial, contemptuous, desperate, altruistic and frustrated attempts to deal with drug addiction. It demonstrates that many of the stigmatising prejudices arose from false 'facts' and semi-mythical beliefs and thus has significant implications, not only for the history of addiction, but also for how we view the condition today.

As seen in the New York Times and on Good Morning America-now updated by the author. Imagine a diet that's as easy as "a spoonful of sugar" (or extra-light olive oil) twice a day. A diet that actually reduces appetite and cravings. A diet that's based on a wealth of scientific findings but is simple enough for anyone to stick to. A diet with results that amaze almost everyone who tries it. Psychology professor Seth Roberts asks a simple question most weight-loss experts haven't thought to tackle: What makes people hungry? Based on a new understanding of how the human body regulates hunger, The Shangri-La Diet presents a strikingly simple and surprisingly effective way to lose weight-without giving up favorite foods. Simple and counterintuitive, this extraordinary new diet is changing the way the world thinks about weight loss-one success story at a time.

"Fletcherism: what it is: or, How I became young at sixty" by Horace fletcher is a fascinating book on nutrition and diet. The author here relates briefly the story of his regeneration, of how he rescued himself from the prospect of an early grave, and brought himself to his present splendid physical and mental condition. He tells of the discovery of his principles, which have helped millions of people to live better, happier, and healthier lives. The book is a good fit if you are concerned about health and diet.

The award-winning author of Fasting Girls explores what teenage girls have lost in this new world of freedom and consumerism—a world in which the body is their primary project. "Fascinating ... riveting ... Women and girls should read this fine book together." —The New York Times Book Review A hundred years ago, women were lacing themselves into corsets and teaching their daughters to do the same. The ideal of the day, however, was inner beauty: a focus on good deeds and a pure heart. Today American women have more social choices and personal freedom than ever before. But fifty-three percent of our girls are dissatisfied with their bodies by the age of thirteen, and many begin a pattern of weight obsession and dieting as early as eight or nine. Why? In The Body Project, historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg answers this question, drawing on diary excerpts and media images from 1830 to the present. Tracing girls' attitudes toward topics ranging from breast size and menstruation to hair, clothing, and cosmetics, she exposes the shift from the Victorian concern with character to our modern focus on outward appearance—in particular, the desire to be model-thin and sexy. Compassionate, insightful, and gracefully written, The Body Project explores the gains and losses adolescent girls have inherited since they shed the corset and the ideal of virginity for a new world of sexual freedom and consumerism—a world in which the body is their primary project.

A groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between capitalism, communism, and Arctic ecology since the dawn of the industrial age. Whales and walruses, caribou and fox, gold and oil: through the stories of these animals and resources, Bathsheba Demuth reveals how people have turned ecological wealth in a remote region into economic growth and state power for more than 150 years. The first-ever comprehensive history of Beringia, the Arctic land and waters stretching from Russia to Canada, Floating Coast breaks away from familiar narratives to provide a fresh and fascinating perspective on an overlooked landscape. The unforgiving territory along the Bering Strait had long been home to humans—the Inupiat and Yupik in Alaska, and the Yupik and Chukchi in Russia—before Americans and Europeans arrived with revolutionary ideas for progress. Rapidly, these frigid lands and waters became the site of an ongoing experiment: How, under conditions of extreme scarcity, would the great modern ideologies of capitalism and communism control and manage the resources they craved? Drawing on her own experience living with and interviewing indigenous people in the region, as well as from archival sources, Demuth shows how the social, the political, and the environmental clashed in this liminal space. Through the lens of the natural world, she views human life and economics as fundamentally about cycles of energy, bringing a fresh and visionary spin to the writing of human history. Floating Coast is a profoundly resonant tale of the dynamic changes and unforeseen consequences that immense human needs and ambitions have brought, and will continue to bring, to a finite planet.

This Side of Paradise is a novel about post-World War I youth and their morality. Amory Blaine is a young Princeton University student with an attractive face and an interest in literature. His greed and desire for social status warp the theme of love weaving through the story.