CALORIES AND CORSETS: A HISTORY OF DIETING OVER TWO THOUSAND YEARS. (SIGNED)

FOXCROFT, Louise.

ISBN 10: 1846684250 / ISBN 13: 9781846684258

Published by Profile Books Ltd., London, 2012

About this Item

8vo. pp 240. Original publisher's burgundy cloth, lettered silver at the spine. Signed presentation from the author on the title page, "December 2011 - love from Louise." ISBN: 1846684250 Fine in fine dust jacket. Seller Inventory # C49939

Bibliographic Details

Title: CALORIES AND CORSETS: A HISTORY OF DIETING ...

Publisher: Profile Books Ltd., London

Publication Date: 2012

Binding: Hardcover

Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

This is an enlightening and entertaining social history of how we have tried (and failed) to battle the bulge over two millennia. 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 deliberately swallowing tapeworm. 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.

About the Author:

Louise Foxcroft has a PhD in the history of medicine from the University of Cambridge. Her most recent book, Hot Flushes, Cold Science [9781847081711] was the winner of the Longman-History Today Prize, 2009. She writes for the Guardian and the London Review of Books.