The modern world is faced with a terrifying new ‘disease’, that\nof ‘obesity’. As people get fatter, we have come to see excess\nweight as unhealthy, morally repugnant and socially damaging. Fat\nit seems has long been a national problem and each age, culture and\ntradition have all defined a point beyond which excess weight is\nunacceptable, ugly or corrupting.

\n

This fascinating new book by Sander Gilman looks at the\ninterweaving of fact and fiction about obesity, tracing public\nconcern from the mid-nineteenth century to the modern day. He looks\ncritically at the source of our anxieties, covering issues such as\nchildhood obesity, the production of food, media coverage of the\nsubject and the emergence of obesity in modern China. Written as a\ncultural history, the book is particularly concerned with the\ncultural meanings that have been attached to obesity over time and\nto explore the implications of these meanings for wider society.\nThe history of these debates is the history of fat in culture, from\nnineteenth-century opera to our global dieting obsession. Fat, A\nCultural History of Obesityis a vivid and absorbing cultural guide\nto one of the most important topics in modern society.

\n\n