Scoot Over Skinny

In this surprising collection, lively, provocative writers explore the many folds of fat that make up reality. Sometimes funny, sometimes angry, often illuminating and always engaging, these stories make a new and compelling case for why more room should be made for bigger behinds.

This volume addresses the overlapping aspects of the fields of genomics, obesity and (non-) medical ethics. It is unique in its examination of the implications of genomics for obesity from an ethical perspective. Genomics covers the sciences and technologies involved in the pathways that DNA takes until the organism is completely built and sustained: the range of genes (DNA), transcriptor factors, enhancers, promoters, RNA (copy of DNA), proteins, metabolism of cell, cellular interactions, organisms. Genomics offers a holistic approach, which, when applied to obesity, can have surprising and disturbing implications for the existing networks tackling this phenomenon. The ethical concerns and consideration presented are inspired by the interaction between the procedural perspective emphasizing the necessity of consultative and participatory organizational relationships in the new gray zones between medicine and food, and the substantive perspective that both cherishes individual autonomy and embeds it in socio-cultural contexts.

The modern world is faced with a terrifying new ‘disease’, that of ‘obesity’. As people get fatter, we have come to see excess weight as unhealthy, morally repugnant and socially damaging. Fat it seems has long been a national problem and each age, culture and tradition have all defined a point beyond which excess weight is unacceptable, ugly or corrupting. This fascinating new book by Sander Gilman looks at the interweaving of fact and fiction about obesity, tracing public concern from the mid-nineteenth century to the modern day. He looks critically at the source of our anxieties, covering issues such as childhood obesity, the production of food, media coverage of the subject and the emergence of obesity in modern China. Written as a cultural history, the book is particularly concerned with the cultural meanings that have been attached to obesity over time and to explore the implications of these meanings for wider society. The history of these debates is the history of fat in culture, from nineteenth-century opera to our global dieting obsession. Fat, A Cultural History of Obesity is a vivid and absorbing cultural guide to one of the most important topics in modern society.

Asian American Literature: An Encyclopedia for Students is an invaluable resource for students curious to know more about Asian North American writers, texts, and the issues and drives that motivate their writing. This volume collects, in one place, a breadth of information about Asian American literary and cultural history as well as the authors and texts that best define it. A dozen contextual essays introduce fundamental elements or subcategories of Asian American literature, expanding on social and literary concerns or tensions that are familiar and relevant. Essays include the origins and development of the term "Asian American"; overviews of Asian American and Asian Canadian social and literary histories; essays on Asian American identity, gender issues, and sexuality; and discussions of Asian American rhetoric and children's literature. More than 120 alphabetical entries round out the volume and cover important Asian North American authors. Historical information is presented in clear and engaging ways, and author entries emphasize biographical or textual details that are significant to contemporary young adults. Special attention has been given to pioneering authors from the late 19th century through the early 1970s and to influential or well-known contemporary authors, especially those likely to be studied in high school or university classrooms.

A thought-provoking collection of the most notable and insightful Buddhism-inspired writing published in the last year: • Thich Nhat Hanh’s vision for a more enlightened and sustainable society • Ezra Bayda on avoiding the pitfalls that arise on the path of meditation • Tsoknyi Rinpoche’s powerful Dzogchen practices that help you to discover your mind’s inherent awareness and clarity • Lodro Rinzler on what happens when the Buddha walks into a bar • Karen Maezen Miller on the virtues of boredom • Phillip Moffitt on how to transform emotional chaos into confidence and clarity • Joseph Goldstein’s unique nine-minute meditation practice that you can incorporate into your busy day • Elihu Genmyo Smith on being still • Pema Chödrön on how to become a bodhisattva • Sakyong Mipham on how mind, breath, and energy work together in meditation to transform your life • Judy Lief on the fifty-nine ancient slogans that can help you be more skillful and loving in all your relationships • Bonnie Friedman on discovering nonattachment while apartment-hopping in Brooklyn • Jules Shuzen Harris on what anger can teach you • Pico Iyer on travel as contemplative practice • And much more

Ochre is the color of our earliest stories. It is the color we chose when we wanted to make paintings on the walls of caves, in places that never did learn the name of sunlight. By the grace of small fires we etched in ochre; we coughed at the smoke in a confined area but also the absurdity of things we would later call warmth and light and home. Ochre was the color that permeated our lives, slipped into our fingernails, found its way onto all our clothes, our bedspreads, and the skins of lovers. There is evidence of ochre in caves dating back twenty centuries BC: horses and bison and traces of human hands. The places we have touched, tried to remember. Our tongues made middens of ochre even when we couldn’t see. If fairy tales are a language, as Kate Bernheimer argues, then...ochre is the color in which that language must be written.

Diets and dieting have concerned – and sometimes obsessed – human societies for centuries. The dieters' regime is about many things, among them the control of weight and the body, the politics of beauty, discipline and even self-harm, personal and societal demands for improved health, spiritual harmony with the universe, and ethical codes of existence. In this innovative reference work that spans many periods and cultures, the acclaimed cultural and medical historian Sander L. Gilman lays out the history of diets and dieting in a fascinating series of articles.

"32 writers discuss how to eat ethically"--