Cover of Thinner than thou
Read Time: ~5.6 hr

Thinner than thou

by Kit Reed (2004)

About this book

TV says it. Magazines say it. American society commands it. You must be thin. You must be young. Fad diets. Fat-purging pills. Fitness clubs. Liposuction. Breast implants. Steroids. In the tomorrow of Thinner Than Thou, the cult of the body has become the one true religion. The Dedicated Sisters are a religious order sworn to help anorexic, bulimic, and morbidly obese youth. Throughout the land, houses of worship have been replaced by the health clubs of the Crossed Triceps. And through hypnotically powerful evangelical infomercials, the Reverend Earl preaches the heaven of the Afterfat, where you will look like a Greek god and eat anything you want. Just sign over your life savings and come to Sylphania, the most luxurious weight-loss spa in the world, where the Reverend himself will personally supervise your attainment of physical perfection. But the glory of youth and thinness that America worships conceals a hidden world where teens train for the competitive eating circuit, where fat porn and obese strippers feed people's dark desires, and where an underground railroad of rebellious religions remember when people worshipped God instead of the Afterfat. As Annie, an anorexic, and her friend Kelly, who is so massive she can barely walk, find out, the tender promises of the Dedicated Sisters are fulfilled by forced feedings and enforced starvation in hidden prisons. As middle-aged Jeremy discovers, Sylphania is a concentration camp where failure to lose weight and tone up leads to brutal punishment. The Rev. Earl's public sympathy for the overweight conceals a private contempt -and, beneath that, a terrible longing known only to a select few. The inevitable decay of old age is the only thing keeping mankind from reaching perfection. Luckily, Reverend Earl has a plan that will take care of that.

Setting / LocationGlobal
Story EraModern Era
Protagonist / CoreThinner than thou Lead Character

Readers who enjoyed this also loved

Cover of Beauty pure and simple

Beauty pure and simple

Kristen Ma

"Beauty Pure and Simple provides an all-natural, holistic view of skincare and beauty drawn from both the latest in skincare science and from Ayurveda, a system of wellness that has been practiced for thousands of years on the Indian subcontinent. In this practical guide, Kristen Ma, who is both a popular esthetician and an Ayurvedic practitioner, provides a skincare and beauty regimen that is easy to use, safe, and effective. Ma gives a clear and readable explanation of skin biology and the basics of Ayurveda as it applies to skin health, helps readers determine their true skin type according to their specific dosha (physical constitution according to Ayurvedic principles), and then recommends individualized regimens with easy-to-obtain products. She also covers such topics as the influence of diet on skin, dealing with skin changes that come with aging, protecting skin from the sun and pollutants, the effect of stress on skin and how to cope with it, and how to treat common problems such as dark circles under the eyes, breakouts, acne, eczema, rosacea, puffy eyes, hyperpigmentation, and many others. Ma is a persuasive advocate for chemical-free products and biodegradable or recyclable packaging, and she alerts readers to the harmful ingredients that are ubiquitous in most products and treatments on the market and recommends alternatives. "--

Cover of Jenny Craig's what have you got to lose?

Jenny Craig's what have you got to lose?

Jenny Craig with Brenda L. Wolfe

Provides weight management program with calorie controlled menus, behavioral guidance, and exercise program, personalized for each individual lifestyle.

Cover of The theft of memory

The theft of memory

Jonathan Kozol

"National Book Award winner Jonathan Kozol is best known for his fifty years of work among our nation's poorest and most vulnerable children. Now, in the most personal book of his career, he tells the story of his father's life and work as a nationally noted specialist in disorders of the brain and his astonishing ability, at the onset of Alzheimer's disease, to explain the causes of his sickness and then to narrate, step-by-step, his slow descent into dementia. Dr. Harry Kozol was born in Boston in 1906. Classically trained at Harvard and Johns Hopkins, he was an unusually intuitive clinician with a special gift for diagnosing interwoven elements of neurological and psychiatric illnesses in highly complicated and creative people. "One of the most intense relationships of his career," his son recalls, "was with Eugene O'Neill, who moved to Boston in the last years of his life so my father could examine him and talk with him almost every day." At a later stage in his career, he evaluated criminal defendants including Patricia Hearst and the Boston Strangler, Albert H. DeSalvo, who described to him in detail what was going through his mind while he was killing thirteen women. But The Theft of Memory is not primarily about a doctor's public life. The heart of the book lies in the bond between a father and his son and the ways that bond intensified even as Harry's verbal skills and cogency progressively abandoned him. "Somehow," the author says, "all those hours that we spent trying to fathom something that he wanted to express, or summon up a vivid piece of seemingly lost memory that still brought a smile to his eyes, left me with a deeper sense of intimate connection with my father than I'd ever felt before." Lyrical and stirring, The Theft of Memory is at once a tender tribute to a father from his son and a richly colored portrait of a devoted doctor who lived more than a century"-- "House author Jonathan Kozol's deeply personal biography of his father, a brilliant neurologist who suffered from Alzheimer's.There are few writers of conscience who write as beautifully as Jonathan Kozol.Departing from the South Bronx and turning his sensitive eye to his own life and legacy, The Theft of Memory is Kozol's most personal book to date, as it explores the life of his father, Harry. Dr. Harry L. Kozol was a nationally-renowned neurologist whose work helped establish the emerging fields of forensic psychiatry and neuropsychiatry. He was a remarkable clinician with unusual capacity to diagnose and identify neurological and psychotic illnesses in highly complicated and sophisticated people, including well-known artists, writers, and intellectuals. Notably, in Eugene O'Neill's last years, the playwright moved to Boston so that he could live close to Kozol's father's office. In addition to his successful private practice in Boston, Kozol operated in a grim arena marked by extreme violence. But while his role as a forensic expert placed him in the public eye for high-profile criminal defendants such as Albert DeSalvo (the Boston Strangler) and Patty Hearst, he was--as his son articulates--"a healer of tormented people, not their judge, not their interrogator." With the same lyricism and clarity that have defined Kozol's acclaimed work on education for decades,The Theft of Memory intimately describes Harry's vibrant life, the challenges following his self-diagnosis of Alzheimer's, and the evolution of their relationship throughout. This unique biography will have a long shelf life as a moving portrait of an extraordinary man, a window into the heart of one of our nation's foremost education activists, and a frank examination of how we come to terms with caregiving"--

Cover of Small simple changes

Small simple changes

Rich Kay

Do you look in the mirror and wonder what happened to you? Is it difficult for you to tie your shoes? Do you find it difficult to do the simple things in life like taking a shower or going to the bathroom? Do you get the infamous fat cramps in your sides? Do you have a closet or boxes full of clothes that you keep thinking someday you will fit into them again, but don t have any idea of when you can put them on again? If you are sick and tired of being overweight and you made a decision to finally do something about it, then this book was written especially for you. Read Rich s Story for yourself and learn how to follow his successful method of shedding those unwanted pounds and keeping them off.

Thinner than thou by Kit Reed | Literally Just Books