From Hadley Freeman, bestselling author of House of Glass , comes a “riveting” ( The New York Times ) memoir about her experience as an anorexic and her journey to recovery. In 1995, Hadley Freeman wrote in her diary: “I just spent three years of my life in mental hospitals. So why am I crazier than I was before????” From the ages of fourteen to seventeen, Freeman lived in psychiatric wards after developing anorexia nervosa. Her doctors informed her that her body was cannibalizing her muscles and heart for nutrition, but they could tell her little else: why she had it, what it felt like, what recovery looked like. For the next twenty years, Freeman lived as a “functioning anorexic,” grappling with new forms of self-destructive behavior as the anorexia mutated and persisted. Anorexia is one of the most widely discussed but least understood mental illnesses. Through “sharp storytelling, solid research and gentle humor” ( The Wall Street Journal ), Freeman delivers an incisive and bracing work that details her experiences with anorexia—the shame, fear, loneliness, and rage—and how she overcame it. She interviews doctors to learn how treatment for the illness has changed since she was hospitalized and what new discoveries have been made about the illness, including its connection to autism, OCD, and metabolic rate. She learns why the illness always begins during adolescence and how this reveals the difficulties for girls to come of age. Freeman tracks down the women with whom she was hospitalized and reports on how their recovery has progressed over decades. Good Girls is an honest and hopeful story of resilience that offers a message to the nearly 30 million Americans who suffer from eating disorders: Life can be enjoyed, rather than merely endured.

PREGNANCY, CHILDREN, & THE VEGAN DIET By Michael Klaper, M.D. A practical guide to creating good health without the use of animal products during pregnancy, lactation, and in growing children. A reading must for all parents to be!

Promises to be the most influential and controversial book ever written on children's nutrition. "Dr. Abraham Hoffer, a founding father of the alternative health movement, outlines a holistic and natural approach to diet that emphasizes good nutrition and mineral and vitamin supplements. Hoffer's approach is a strident one: he suggests placing advertising for junk food in the same category as those for tobacco, alcohol, and addictive drugs, and advocates health warnings for dairy products similar to those used for cigarettes. However, he backs up his radical beliefs with sound evidence and provides simple advice for a healthy diet, and an extensive list of the nutrients contained in common foods". -- Quill & Quire Following upon the success of his previous books on orthomolecular nutrition for adults, including Hoffer's Laws of Natural Nutrition: A Guide to Eating Well for Pure Health and Smart Nutrients: A Guide to Nutrients That Can Prevent and Reverse Senility, Dr. Abram Hoffer has written the definitive book on natural nutrition for children. He examines most chronic illnesses suffered by children, with special attention to learning and behavior disorders, and based on over 2,000 case studies, discovers that dietary deficiency is the predominant cause. He recommends against pharmaceutical (ritalin, for example), psychotherapeutic, and surgical intervention in favor of the orthomolecular diet he developed many years ago in cooperation with Dr. Linus Pauling.

This book looks at how hospital care got on the wrong track, from historical and economic perspectives. It then offers suggestions for minimizing the risks of a hospital stay and ways to improve your on experience. Good nutrition is the key - to boost your immune system, speed recovery from illness, and reduce your need for pharmaceuticals....

Advances in modern medicine - with the exception of psychiatry - are fantastic. Who would accept the surgical techniques of 1950, today? Which hospital would allow a surgeon fully trained in 1950 to even enter a modern surgical suite? In psychiatry, modern treatment does no better than it did in 1950. Psychiatry has the worst record of any medical specialty. This assessment is based on my observations from 1950 when I began to work in the mental hospitals in Saskatchewan. At that time patients were locked up in awful buildings placed far from centers of population. The treatment used by the Quakers in 1840, which yielded fifty percent discharge recoveries, was forgotten. Admission to mental hospital in 1950 was a life sentence, with no time off for good behaviour. The situation is different today. Patients are no longer locked up, but their brains are imprisoned by powerful, toxic chemicals from which they can not and are not allowed to escape. Orthomolecular treatment, which developed before these toxic drugs were found, has been ignored. Modern psychiatry uses only drugs and ignores the three most important elements of treatment, i.e. shelter, food, and treatment with civility and respect. The evidence is provided in this book. The optimum treatment in 1850 when drugs were not available yielded fifty percent recovery; today it is less than ten percent if the criteria are freedom from symptoms, ability to get along well with family and the community, and paying income tax.