Subtitled, "A History Of Dieting Over Two Thousand Years". A witty guide to dieting throughout history, which exposes its absurdities and the same traps that befall everybody.

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 and is a Non-Alcoholic Trustee on the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous, working on AA literature and archive materials.

"'For Hot Flushes, Cold Science: 'Not many Cambridge academics can make you laugh aloud and gasp with shock. Louise Foxcroft does both in a rampaging history of the relationship between doctors and the menopause through three centuries' (Libby Purves, Mail on Sunday) 'Read this book' (India Knight, Evening Standard)"