Product Description
Geneen Roths pioneering books were among the first to link overeating and compulsive dieting with deeply personal issues that go far beyond weight and body image. Now, in this fun, practical book, she helps readers radically shift their relationships with food and find more life-affirming ways to care for themselves. With an exhilarating combination of intelligence and wicked good humor, she offers bite-sized pieces of invaluable wisdom.Amazon.com Review
Geneen Roth estimates that she's gained and lost more than1,000 pounds during her life. That makes her uniquely qualified towrite this, her sixth book, which delivers exactly what its subtitleindicates: 50 Ways to Feel Thin, Gorgeous, and Happy (When You FeelAnything But). It's sure to appeal to her considerable cult ofreaders who've bought her other feel-good, anti-diet books includingthe bestselling WhenFood Is Love: Exploring the Relationship Between Eating andIntimacy and Why Weight?: A Guide toEnding Compulsive Eating. It's for the estimated 25 millionwomen in America alone who are on diets; for those who find thatthey're never happy because they delay gratification ("I'll behappy when I lose 10 pounds"), and those who punish themselvesfor eating one too many chocolate chip cookies.

Roth's advice is simple, but often beyond the realm of thinking ofsomeone obsessed with calorie counting. She recommends that you eat atleast one hot meal every day, as a slice of hot pizza will make youfeel more full than a cold and cardboardy one will; that you should doone "exquisitely kind" thing for yourself every day, be itbuying new underwear or taking a sledgehammer to your scale; and thatyou should "separate the desire to be thin from the desire to becherished." She also gives straight diet advice that can't befound in publications along the lines of Cosmo: "Toomuch fat makes you fat. But too little makes you fat, too,because you usually make up for eating nonfat foods by eating twice asmuch. I suggest you allow yourself to eat enough fat to feelfull. Part of the reason that many of us feel as if we could starteating at one end of our kitchens and chomp our way clear across theUnited States is that we never give ourselves permission to feel fullwithout feeling guilty, to eat enough fat when it's not on abinge." Amen. --Erica Jorgensen ... Read more

Customer Reviews (49)

A Fun Companion to Her Other Books
I'm a fan of Geneen Roth, and I have enjoyed her other books as well.This one was a little more light-hearted and fun, which makes it a good companion to her other books in which she shares her story in a more personal way.Her strength has always been the ability to openly share her struggles and inner feelings.

The title gives you a clue about what kind of book this is.Look at the way you tend to go to the fridge or cupboard and start grazing from packages and containers, taking a bite of this and that without even heating up the leftovers.I like the way Geneen makes us think about how we use food.You know what you are doing is wrong and you have the responsibility to change.

The book consists of 50 very short chapters, some only a couple of pages in length.It is a good reminder when you feel that urge to use food to suppress your feelings.

For some people, this will be enough to help them reframe their thoughts.For hyper-eaters who feel strong emotional ties to food and are dealing with emotional issues, this will probably not give them the techniques needed for creating permanent behavior changes.

Excellent!
This was a great book, if nothing else, than to pull myt head into focus.It has a lot of tips to help a person live life and not focus on the bad.Defeinitely recommended!

Funny and thought provoking
This was a "required" text for one of my college courses; and for the first time it turned into "pleasure" reading as well.There were so many different "angles" on food, dieting, self-concept than I had heard/read/thought in the past it really gave a great new perspective!

you are funny Geene
In light of the struggle, Geneen ends the book in the most hilarious way. You crack me up. ( better than going to the fridge ) and I feel lighter already. Kudos to you Geneen.

Tapas for your soul
This book is just a continuation of the amazing wisdom of Geneen Roth's insite to Life.It is not just about food, it is about how you live your life and enjoy each delicious minute of it.I call it Tapas for the soul because it has a little wisdom in each of the 50 tips and they are so filling you will want to share with friends. ... Read more

Product Description
Perfect hardback. Fine volume in fine dust jacket. Mint condition. Fast shipping. Seller guarantees 100% satisfaction. ... Read more

Product Description
An intimate glimpse into the soul of Jack Erdmann, an intelligent, charismatic man who also happens to be a fourth-generation alcoholic, Whiskey's Children recounts Jack's journey from the pain and despair of addiction to the miracle of recovery. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

an inheritance no one wants
Think of all the good things you wish for your children -- health, happiness, safety and love must surely be on the list -- and then realize, if you are an alcoholic, what you may in truth pass on:fear, grief, rage, an inability to love or be loved, and the terminal disease of alcoholism itself.Mr. Erdmann explores his heritage of alcoholism, passed down from his grandfather to his father to him, and the legacy he gave his children.Burdens too big and confusing for their small trembling shoulders, fear, confusion -- so so sad, and so so common.If you are or think you are an alcoholic, do yourself and the people you love a favor and read this.And even if you don't want to quit drinking, find an AA meeting, shut your mouth and open your ears; give your children a chance, even if you never got one.

He Looked So Sad On the Palomino Pony!
Alcoholism is not an emotional disorder per se, but it does sometimes have emotional triggers.When my dad started drinking in beer joints, he was in his thirties and had buried two wives and five children.I suffered inconsqentially as a result of his stopping at the nearest joint from our house on the way back for Saturday movies on the town, and I would have to hide in the backseat of the car.Since we had to traverse many curves for the few miles to get home, I remember praying all the way there for God to let us live.

You can tell the children whose dad drinks alcohol, because he carries a load of guilt and pain, thinking he caused the abuse he would later reap by, looking at families who walk by and look at the young ones' faces.It is devastating.

This town has a long history going back to bootlegger days before prohibition of brewing their own 'spirits' openly and for a long time on the main street of town (which they do again in this modern, accepting age), and the men are proud to be drinkers.They look down on those who are not addicted to alcohol.They are the dummies.One local writer told me recently, "You think I am just a drunk."I replied, "If I did that, why would I ask you to show me how to drink?" which he refused to do as I have liver disease.He was his usual 'confused' self and asked "Why did you choose me?"My honest answer, "I trust you because I know you won't touch me" and I thought he might feel enough responsibility to not let any of the other drunks take advantage if I started acting silly.But he told me that he can't control his own drinking, so he ended up not even offering me a drink of water.Ever!Now, I know water is not going to cause this hemangioma to burst, but it seems that something else did.Probably the pain pills I have taken for a chronic nerve pain I have had since 1994.Feeling sorry for me yet, Arthur Hardaway.

Jack Daniels' Whiskey from right here in Tennessee is internationally known and sought after; people come from all over the United States looking for Lynchburg, Tennessee, as if they were seeking the Holy Grail.I heard a bigoted preacher get all emotional about the difference in immersion vs. sprinkling.He said that sprinkling is like scattering a little dirt on top of a dead person instead of burying him in a grave.Since I am a Methodist, I told him that he 'hit below the belt.'He also proclaimed that only immersed Baptists will enter Heaven.For years, I thought it was Seventh Day Adventists who preached that.My sister Evelyn belonged to that group for awhile until they betrayed her.

Jack Erdmann has written othre books because I have reviewed one or more.He was the son of a jazz musician and an ex-chorus dancer in St. Louis.His reminiscing starts in 1934 when, as an altar boy, he drank the communion wine.Then, like this local writer, he drank because of loneliness.He even thinks his son should be allowed to buy beer when he is old enough to 'serve his country' in war but not yet old enough to vote.How dumb can you be!

Co-writer Larry Kearney, a poet who settled in San Francisco (where Jack lives), was born in Brooklyn in 1943.Both are recovering alcoholics.

A searing, unsparing odyssey from the gutter to the light
Jack Erdmann's story of his long struggle back from the strangling grip that alcoholism held on his life, as well asover members of his family for four generations, is a tour de force.This book is not just for alcoholics, or for drinkers who feel that they "don't have a problem," it is for everyone who is willing to accompany Erdmann on a harrowing journey.

For those readers with alcoholics in the family, they--we--find ourselves nodding with recognition, and ultimately uplifted by the knowledge that there's a way up from the bottom.They will find assistance from now-sober alcoholics "with kind eyes, offering hot cups of bad coffee," in the words of Anne Lamott, a recovering alcoholic herself, who wrote the foreword.

You want an "easy, feel-good" book--well, there are plenty of THOSE.You want one that will change your life, or that of someone whom you love, or that will give breathtaking insights into the lives of the alcoholics you know, "Whiskey's Children" is the best effort I've found.There are pathos, self-degradation, guilt, self-loathing, and even a quiet humor in these pages.

If Amazon offered more than five stars, Erdmann and his co-author Larry Kearney would have earned them many times over.Not just for writing, but from their phoenix-life resurrection from the ashes of an alcoholic life.

This is a wonderful book.

Not just about booze
Whiskey's Children is a great book, period.While it chronicled the casual horrors and quiet heartbreak of a family damaged by alcohol better than any book I've read, it also tells a universal story of human frailty and persistance.It is shocking, depressing...and funny.Read it for any reason, and then read 'A Bar on Every Corner' by the same author.

THIS IS A GREAT BOOK!
This is an extremely well written account of the effect drinking has on families. From the tyranny of his drunken father to his own acts of mindless, unheeding drunkeness as an adult, Erdmann paints a vivid picture of what it's like to drink too much, too often, and not seem to be able to stop even though it's destroying everything in your life. As enjoyable as The Lost Weekend. ... Read more

Product Description
Readers will find 365 meditationsin a walk-through experience from other compulsive eaters in 12 Step Recovery from compulsive eating.This is an inspirational reader used by members of Overeaters Anonymous and others with eating disorders, substance abuse problems, or behavior addictions.

Anonymous individuals who practice Twelve Step Recovery decided to produce this daily reader to more fully reflect our experience with dieting and recovery from compulsive eating. Such collective wisdom helps us to view each day as an opportunity for happiness by focusing on the reality of today without the burdens of compulsive eating. We are on a brighter firmer path. Our experience with dieting is what we first tried to solve life problems and compulsive eating. It is where we first hit bottom. Often it made us sick and impaired our thinking. We came into Twelve Step Recovery. Health with weight management is possible. These meditations are by and for recovering compulsive overeaters.

With quotes from Anne Lamott, Camryn Manheim, Bob Dylan, Flannery O'Connor, Joan Didion, Oprah Winfrey, Alice Walker, Aimee Liu, and other notables, past and present, used in concert with the meditations, this reader brings some of the pleasures and rewards about truth-telling and arriving at self-truth to the surface. Selections deal with our desperation and fear, misconceptions about life, and especially, how our ideas of love, the terrors of love, and romantic addiction have played into our compulsive eating and dieting. We talk about what we have tried for control, invisibility, buying time, putting off or conquering life. We identify 'So Many Lies' about the remedies, behaviors and methods, and tell about putting our lives on the basis of truth. We tell what happened to make us stop compulsive eating and the dieting methods we have tried and to come into Twelve Step Recovery. We share about "Self-Care" and "Building On Identity" - what we do to practice clear thinking, detach from erroneous messages, clear away self-deception, develop kindness toward self and others, be safe, recognize and deal effectively with attack voices, deal with overwhelming emotions, know and practice courage, serve, and build identity based on our God-given talents, abilities and enthusiasms. We talk about love, honor, loving self, loving another, loving the world.

[Letting Go of Compulsive Eating ISBN 978-1-933639-55-0 is also published under the title Recovering Compulsive Dieter and Recovering Compulsive Overeater - Daily Meditations]. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Really Worthwhile Purchase
I'm really glad I decided to buy this.It's a really helpful tool for anyone who needs a daily reminder of their goals and motivation to stay on track.This has helped me make better choices throughout my day because every reading hits home and gives me something to reflect on.I would buy it again and also reccomend Food for Thought: Daily Meditations For Overeaters as a book for daily reading.It is smaller and more travel friendly; great for trips since it is so easy to overeat when you're out of town!

Beautiful Book in Design & Content
This is a beautiful book in design and content. The book will be my companion to Overeaters Anonymous "For Today." It is profound. It is joyous. It speaks of the trials and the hardwon recovering. The glow is here. Thank you for your service and hard work to put together these splendid meditations.

A Delight
A delight. The contributors and editors have given us a very good book of meditations here - telling the truth -- telling the joy of hardwon ordinary weight management and health.

Needed Addition to Topic of Health & Healthy Eating
This is a needed addition to the important topic of health and healthy eating. It addresses some of the lies in the common culture.It shows how these lies create thinking that is full of stress and alarm.I'm so glad the writers have given us this.

Physical Recovery without the Aggression
A wonderful reader about recovery while stopping the aggression.I learned so much about my own unspoken thinking.From the heart. It is written with emotional clarity. The contributors provide a combination of the practical and the spiritual. This book adds a dimension to the literature of dieting.It has a story line rolled into it by the contributors. It is also a book of meditations.The quotes are stimulating.An excellent read.It works on many levels.It will be a welcome companion to my nightstand. And to my recovery. ... Read more

Product Description
From the editors of the cutting-edge
online magazine Salon come provocative essays that take an unflinching look at
the gritty truths and unreserved pleasures
of contemporary motherhood.

Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood, which grew out of Salon's popular daily department of the same name, comprises nearly forty essays by writers grappling with the new and compelling ideas that motherhood has dangled before them. Elevating the discussion of motherhood above the level of tantrum control and potty training, this collection covers an unparalleled range of topics, from the impossibility of loving your children equally to raising a son without a father, from worrying that your privileged black child is becoming too "white" to the free-floating anger most mothers feel but wouldn't dare admit--except to other mothers. The intelligent, candid essays in Mothers Who Think are a testament to the notion that motherhood gives women more to think about, not less.
Coeditors Camille Peri and Kate Moses have assembled the best writing from the website's first two years, including works by "Mothers Who Think" regulars Anne Lamott, Chitra Divakaruni, Susie Bright, and Stephanie Coontz; eloquent new essays by Jayne Anne Phillips, Sallie Tisdale, Susan Straight, Jane Lazarre, Nora Okja Keller, Beth Kephart, Ariel Gore, and Alex Witchel; and more than a dozen un-forgettable new voices.
Irreverent, wistful, hilarious, fierce, tender, these essays offer an unsparing look at the myths and realities, serious and silly sides, and thankless and supremely satisfying aspects of being a mother.

WRITERS

Erin Aubry, Karen Grigsby Bates, Susie Bright, Stephanie Coontz, Chitra Divakaruni, Celeste Fremon, Mona Gable, Leslie Goodman-Malamuth, Ariel Gore, Arlene Green, Nora Okja Keller, Beth Kephart, Anne Lamott, Jane Lazarre, Lori Leibovich, Ceil Malek, Joyce Millman, Kate Moses, Beth Myler, Debra S. Ollivier, Camille Peri, Jayne Anne Phillips, Elizabeth Rapoport, Jennifer Reese, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Cynthia Romanov, Catherine A. Salton, Sandi Kahn Shelton, Rose Stoll, Susan Straight, Sallie Tisdale,
Kim Van Meter, Cathy Wilkinson,Alex Witchel

ON MOTHERHOOD

Adoption, Babysitters, Baths, Birth, Blenders, Bodies, Boys Without Men, Brothers, Car Pools, Cold Coffee, College, Cupcakes, Custody, Daughters, Death, Diapers, Divorce, Dramas, Dreams, Escape, Expectations, Experience, Fantasies, Fathers, Food, Grandmothers, Growing Up, Gumbo, Home, Hunger, Kiddie Pools, Language, Lists, Love, Memories, Mothers, Nursing, Pets, Pregnancy, Pride, Princesses, Rage, School, Separation, Sex, Single Mothers, Sippy Cups, Sisters, Sleep Deprivation, Smells, Soccer Moms, Sons, Stepmothers, Tantrums, Teenagers, Time, Vibrators, Waterbeds, Working Mothers,
Writing MothersAmazon.com Review
This book should come as manna to moms: a multitude of small,wry voices reminding them they're not alone. Mothers Who Think is acollection of pieces from the Salon magazine column of the samename. The column (and the book) has no fixed perspective, no set goal,no political agenda--just a bunch of women writers mouthing off aboutchanging diapers. Okay, more than just diapers. There's Rahna ReikoRizzuto on her gruesome labor ("the mucus plug ... fell out of myunderwear and onto my husband's shoe"); hipMama editor ArielGore on family court ("I learned that two professionals on a case areusually worse than none. That three can be dangerous"); Susan Straighton being a single mom and taking care of everything yourself ("I justwish I didn't look so bad doing it"); and Elizabeth Rapoport on beinga married mom and taking care of everything yourself ("I must confessI'm a little jaded by these sociological pissing contests. Just wakeme when the dads are doing 50 percent. Period"). A couple of dozenothers chime in as well, notably novelist Anne Lamott, New YorkTimes reporter Alex Witchel, and sexpert Susie Bright.

EditorsCamille Peri and Kate Moses have created a chorus with range: this isnot a stream of white, privileged voices interrupted only occasionallyby news from the underclass, news from women of color, or news fromsexual minorities. If anything, the book is too focused on a widevariety of very personal stories--one often wishes for the gesture ofexpansion, the linking of the personal to the cultural. Still, that'sa small gripe to have with a book that takes us into the brainier, funnierkitchens of motherhood all over America. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (21)

You'll Find Yourself in Here
This book is unabashadly honest.Mothers who are hard on themselves (find me one who isn't!) will find themselves in these pages in refreshingly forgiving and honest ways.Some of these essays have laugh out loud moments, and about every one is well written and poignant.Every topic that might concern a mom is represented here:abandonment, anger, boredom, illness, single parent issues, sibling rivalry, and so on. I received this book as a gift and took a while to get around to reading it (almost three years).I wish I had picked it up sooner; it would have brought me so much delight and comfort even sooner.

The only thing wrong with this book is its title!
I had heard about this book for years before I read it.What held me back was the title---I pictured this being a book about not just mothers who think, but mothers who think MORE THAN REGULAR MOTHERS---you know the kind of book.One with essays by mothers who think they are more devoted, more in tune, more able to work and care for their kids at one time..etc.That wasn't what this was at all.It is a collection of extremely well done essays about all aspects of parenting.In my opinion, the best here is On Not Having a Daughter, by Jayne Anne Phillips---about a child not born--I'll remember this writing always.You'll Get Used to It is another great one, about the tough seperation from your child and how you someday do miss how hard it is for them to leave!The Line is White and It is Narrow tells of a boy on the autistic spectrum with a love for soccer, and how his mother helps him make his dreams come true.I could go on and on...lots of terrific writing here.The weakest pieces in my opinion are the few short humor pieces about everything going wrong during childbirth---they are a little too slapstick for me, but they aren't that bad!Highly recommended collection about a topic that doesn't really get that much good writing---the thoughts and ideas of mothering.

Some thought before they wrote and some didn't!
About 90% of these essays were touching, the other 10% seemed like last minute homework assignments that were slapped together. All in all it was just a nice, touching, ok book.

Excellent
This book is just a gem and one that I deeply treasure; it is the finest collection of motherhood non-fiction I have ever read. These true stories make you laugh, think, and cry all at once.
This book does not feature a collection of miserable, whiny women naval gazing about how haaaaard motherhood is (like A [...] in the House); rather these are heartful, intelligent essays written by women who have experienced such love for their kids that you read with tears in your eyes. There are stories of poverty, legal nightmares in family court, the heartache of knowing your child is unhappy at school, the remorse you feel when you give in to rage, etc.etc. This is a book for mothers who think. I wish I knew more of them.

MustRead
This book is one that I give to any pregnant women that I know. I read the hardcover edition of this book in one sitting and felt like someone was articulating truths of motherhood. This book offers articles previously published on Salon in the MWT category. However, the site changed the name and focus of the articles.

Buy this book and suggest it to expecting mamas. ... Read more