The day after Labor Day (six days from today) our new book comes out, and our publisher finally gave us permission to excerpt it.  I’m going to post the entire introduction so you’ll know why we came to write this particular book.

The story you will read will be true and the names won’t be changed to protect the ‘innocent.’  Until the events transpired that you will soon be reading about, I was not especially a proponent of fast weight loss.  I mean a low-carb diet will make people lose weight quickly, but that’s not what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about the people who used to come into my office saying, “I’ve got my high school reunion in a month.  How much weight can I lose by then?’  I always considered these as fairly ludicrous requests because the requesters clearly weren’t concerned about health issues, but simply about how they would look in the short run, without an eye to maintaining their lifestyle.

As a consequence of dealing with so many of these patients, I really developed an aversion to the notion of quick weight loss to meet some sort of deadline where appearance counted.  But, as with so many things in life, it’s easy to pontificate until you find yourself in the same position as the people to whom you’re pontificating.

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While looking for an old post for a reader, I came upon one of the bestseller lists I did last year, which reminded me that I hadn’t posted one of these in a while.  I had been trying to keep them up quarterly so that readers of this blog could see the books other readers were buying, but, what with all the links required, these posts are a real hassle to put up. So, since I, like most everyone else, gravitate toward pleasure and away from pain, I’ve not kept up with my quarterly timetable.

I can probably muster up the gumption to do it annually, so here is the list of the bestselling books from 2008.  These are the books that readers of this blog purchased through Amazon by clicking on the links or book icons on my blog, MD’s blog and the home page of the website.  I’ve listed only books not written by MD and/or me.

The number one bestselling book was Mistakes Were Made, which is one of the better books that I’ve read in a long, long time.  It’s now out in paperback, so if you haven’t read it, get a copy.  It explains in an easy-to-read way how the confirmation bias works and why we all need to carefully examine why we believe what we believe.  And it shows the validity of Stuart Chase’s famous quote: Read more »

In the fall of 1898 Sir William Crookes (right) gave his inaugural address as the incoming president of the British Academy of Sciences.   Unlike the typical such speech, this one was prophetic and alerted the British populace for the first time to a real and growing problem.  And the populace began to worry, because Sir William was the Al Gore of his day, alerting his country (and the world) to a looming danger.

Other than prophesying disaster, however, there were a few notable differences between Sir William and Al Gore.  First and foremost, Sir William was a true scientist, not a bloated former politician with no technical training.  He was the inventor of the predecessor of the tubes later used in televisions and radios and had discovered and added thallium to the periodic table.  The second major difference is that his worries were valid.  They weren’t concocted from a gibberish of people hoping to cash in on the public’s fears of an imaginary melting of the earth, but were born of a serious concern for the continued success of the human race.  Or at the very least, the continued success of the people of Great Britain.

Sir William Crookes was deeply (and rightfully) concerned that the world would soon run out of the ability to fertilize crops, and that, as a consequence, millions would die.  At that time Britain was importing guano (the droppings of sea birds) from islands off the coast of Peru and from the nitrate fields of Chile, but those sources were finite, and Sir William realized they would at some point run out.  (He predicted sometime in 1930 as doomsday.)

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I usually try to put up a best seller list of all the books readers of this blog ordered through the Amazon links every quarter.  I just realized that I missed a quarter, so I’ll do the list for the last two quarters as one.  I love bestseller lists, so I assume everyone else does, too.  It’s nice to know what your fellow low-carb enthusiasts are reading.

These are books purchased through the Amazon links on this blog, MD’s blog, and the Protein Power website.  As always, the rules for selection are that no books authored  or co-authored by MD and/or me are included.  Only those written by others.

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