Eat Fat

Politics & Social Sciences

Klein, Richard

Anthropology

Random House Value Publishing

In this tour de force the author traces the older, positive meanings of the word "fat." He analyzes "the thing fat, " discussing not only the aesthetics of fat but also the nature of fat. He examines "fat sex, " including representations of the human body designed to arouse people whose taste in beauty is fat. And he explores "political fat, " i.e., the relation of fat to power.

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Pantheon

From the iconoclastic author of Cigarettes Are Sublime, a sexy, funny book that is part novel, part thesis on jewelry—on all the ways that jewelry conveys messages and intimates secrets. The narrator, Abby Zinzo, is writing an amusing, erotic memoir to accompany the jewelry he’s leaving to his adolescent heir. In it he explains to her what jewelry has meant to him throughout a checkered life lived mostly in Paris and around the continent, in strange ménages—but always with jewelry in view. His obsession is not only with jewelry itself, but also with the great women who have worn it. He writes about its magic, its lore, its attraction—in history and on the streets, in public and in the most intimate scenarios. He can’t stop thinking about it, or about the Duchess of Windsor, Elizabeth Taylor, Coco Chanel—women of the twentieth century who have owned magnificent jewelry. He dreams about them and about the pavé diamond ring that Dodi al Fayed gave to Diana. He examines their lives and their philosophies of adornment in order to better understand jewelry for reasons that are intensely personal, reasons that concern his very life and love. An audacious work of fiction, a form of cultural critique, Jewelry Talks is an intellectual tour de force, an erotically delightful concoction of a book, a rare combination that will titillate and satisfy both the most serious and the most sentimental of readers.

Jewelry Talks: A Novel Thesis

Literature & Fiction

United States

In this tour de force the author traces the older, positive meanings of the word "fat." He analyzes "the thing fat, " discussing not only the aesthetics of fat but also the nature of fat. He examines "fat sex, " including representations of the human body designed to arouse people whose taste in beauty is fat. And he explores "political fat, " i.e., the relation of fat to power. From the Hardcover edition.

Diets & Weight Loss

Vintage

Campy, bitchy, outrageous, and quite a bit more than over the top, Abby Zinzo describes himself as “a cross between Auntie Mame and Louis the Sun King.” Abby has lived a life dedicated to pleasure, and nothing has given him more pleasure than owning, wearing, or merely contemplating the lustrous objects with which women and men have always adorned themselves. In this sexy, funny book that is part novel and part thesis on jewelry, Abby sits down to record everything he has learned over a lifetime, planning to leave this story along with his collection of valuable stones to his beloved niece, Zeem. He recounts the history of famous gems–like the fabulous Koh-i-Noor and the brilliant blue Hope diamond–and regales us with naughty tales of the women who made the beautiful jewelry their own, including Coco Chanel, the Duchess of Windsor, and Elizabeth Taylor. He also narrates his own sensational life, from Harvard undergraduate to dancer in a notorious Paris drag cabaret to his twilight as a man for whom gender is just another glittering ornament. Sharp, fascinating, and sparkling with its own inner fire, Jewelry Talks is precious gem in and of itself.

Social Sciences

Diane Pub Co.

Cigarettes Are Sublime

Cigarettes are bad for you; that is why they are so good. With its origins in the author’s urgent desire to stop smoking, Cigarettes Are Sublime offers a provocative look at the literary, philosophical, and cultural history of smoking. Richard Klein focuses on the dark beauty, negative pleasures, and exacting benefits attached to tobacco use and to cigarettes in particular. His appreciation of paradox and playful use of hyperbole lead the way on this aptly ambivalent romp through the cigarette in war, movies (the "Humphrey Bogart cigarette"), literature, poetry, and the reflections of Sartre to show that cigarettes are a mixed blessing, precisely sublime.

Addiction & Recovery

Duke University Press Books

Essays & Correspondence

The Rock of Arles

History & Criticism

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Klein, Richard. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Klein, Richard