Diet books contribute to a $60-billion industry as they speak to the 45 million Americans who diet every year. Yet these books don’t just tell readers what to eat: they offer complete philosophies about who Americans are and how we should live.  Diet and the Disease of Civilization  interrupts the predictable debate about eating right to ask a hard question: what if it’s not calories—but concepts—that should be counted? Cultural critic Adrienne Rose Bitar reveals how four popular diets retell the “Fall of Man” as the narrative backbone for our national consciousness. Intensifying the moral panic of the obesity epidemic, they depict civilization itself as a disease and offer diet as the one true cure.  Bitar reads each diet—the Paleo Diet, the Garden of Eden Diet, the Pacific Island Diet, the detoxification or detox diet—as both myth and manual, a story with side effects shaping social movements, driving industry, and constructing fundamental ideas about sickness and health.  Diet and the Disease of Civilization  unearths the ways in which diet books are actually utopian manifestos not just for better bodies, but also for a healthier society and a more perfect world.  "Bitar’s fascinating thesis is that diet books are ways to understand contemporary social and political movements. Whether or not you agree with her provocative arguments, they are well worth reading." -- Marion Nestle ― professor emerita, New York University, author of Food Politics " Diet and the Disease of Civilization  is a timely and beautifully executed piece of work, providing a distinctly new perspective on the histories of food, the politics of fitness, and the development of popular self-help guides." -- Benjamin Reiss ― author of Wild Nights: How Taming Sleep Created our Restless World "Adrienne Rose Bitar lets you see contemporary American diet books as a continuation of the oldest, eighteenth-century American story: self-improvement as saving the world, and not vice-versa. She reads them as manifestos of a nineteenth-century American story, of America—of what was once called 'Americanitis'—as a disease: 'Modern life makes Americans sick.'  Diet books are fictions, Bitar insists throughout, and not altogether negatively: many read them for the same reason we read novels. Which makes you wonder: if diet books were listed on the best-seller charts as fiction, would they drive out all the novels, or stop selling?" -- Greil Marcus "Instead of evaluating diets by their ability to promote weight loss, Bitar reads them as powerful stories. She discovered that these seemingly mundane diet books reinvent history, measuring the success or failure of civilization by the health of body and body politic." ― Cornell Chronicle "Starting a New Year diet? Cornell historian explores American history through diet books" by Jeff Tyson ― Cornell University Media Relations Office " Diet and the Disease of Civilization on The Page 99 Test" by Marshal Zeringue ― The Page 99 Test " Diet and the Disease of Civilization on Campaign for the American Reader" by Marshal Zeringue ― Campaign for the American Reader Diet and the Disease of Civilization spotlight on 360 Magazine Online ― 360 Magazine "[ Diet and the Disease of Civilization ] argues that mythologies of the 'Fall of Man' underlie the Paleo Diet and three other regimes popular in the United States." ― Chronicle Why Do Humans Diet? Cultural critic Adrienne Rose Bitar reveals how four popular diets tell us an awful lot about our anxieties and fears, even beyond health. ― Clever Cookstr "Business for Breakfast," Money Radio interview with Adrienne Rose Bitar ― Business for Breakfast - Money Radio "​An Unofficial History of Rich Women and Their Diets" ― Town & Country Diet and the Disease of Civilization : An Interview with Adrienne Rose Bitar by David Gerstle ― Platypus Blog "New Books Network Podcast" interview with Adrienne Rose Bitar ― New Books Network "Opinion: It’s past time for migrant children labor laws to grow up" by Adrienne Rose Bitar ― San Jose Mercury News "Bitar’s very well-researched and intriguing analysis is worth the read, perhaps to those more interested in American studies than in utopian studies. For those whose interests overlap in the two areas, Diet and the Disease of Civilizatio n is ideal." ― Utopian Studies Review "Diet Books as Utopian Manifestos: A Conversation with Adrienne Rose Bitar" ― Nursing Clio "The Food Readers Organization 'Featured Author' Adrienne Rose Bitar" ― Food Readers "The stories behind history's dumbest diets" by Raquel Laneri ― New York Post "Fake Meat: the Future of Food?" by Conan Milner ― Epoch Times "Bitar looks at the ways the multi-billion dollar diet book industry not only delivers dieting advice, but also tells readers how they should live. Through historical and literary analysis, Bitar examines four diets that, in their language, tell a story beyond food. Instead,  Diet and the Dise