Rethinking Thin - by Gina Kolata (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

In this eye-opening report, New York Times science writer Gina Kolata shows that our society's obsession with dieting is less about keeping trim and staying healthy than about money, power, trends, and impossible ideals. Kolata's account of four determined dieters in a study comparing the Atkins diet to a low-calorie one becomes a broad tale of science and society, of social mores and social sanctions, and of the place of diets in American society. Brimming with anecdote, scientific data, and common sense, Rethinking Thin offers a challenge to the conventional wisdom about diets and weight loss.

Review Quotes

"Kolata lays out the case against the nation's multibillion-dollar weight-loss industry with compelling clarity." --The New York Sun

"An incisive, thought-provoking examination of a subject that concerns us all. This book will educate and illuminate those seeking solid information about the struggle to lose weight." --Jerome Groopman, M.D., author of How Doctors Think

"[Kolata] questions the current chest-beating in this sobering examination of why diets fail." --People (four stars, critic's choice)

"[Kolata] punctuates her eight chapters with the voices of a cluster of dieters, [and] their stories add human consequence to the universal findings." --The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

"A first-rate author . . . Readers who care about the searing obesity debate will want to read this book." --Houston Chronicle

"[Kolata's] report reveals well-documented intelligence certain to annoy those segments of society and commerce that stubbornly cling to the ignis fatuus that all one needs to be thin is willpower." --Booklist

"This book will make you think differently about obesity and perhaps make the obese think more realistically about themselves." --The Arizona Republic

About the Author

Gina Kolata is a senior writer who covers medicine for The New York Times, and the author of five previous books, including Ultimate Fitness and the national bestseller Flu. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.