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Written in accessible but medically accurate prose, Anorexia provides a detailed explanation of how the diagnosis of anorexia is made, common physical and personality characteristics of those affected by the illness, and both short and long-term complications.

Anorexia takes the discussion a step further than similar books on the subject by placing the disease in context with a broad survey of the history of self-starvation from Antiquity to the present, and it tackles the difficult question of whether anorexia nervosa existed before the 19th century or is a uniquely modern disease. The book evaluates in detail the social, economic and cultural environments within which self-starvation has occurred historically, and it analyzes competing theories of the disease's origins--including sociocultural, developmental, biochemical, and genetic hypotheses. The book also provides coverage of several often overlooked topics, such as the incidence of anorexia among young men, and it makes use of the personal narrative of an anorexic throughout to give the reader some sense of what it feels like to have anorexia and what someone with anorexia may be thinking.