Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

It’s Penn Jillette again, so you think – more debunking of fraudulent magic? Questioning God, perhaps? But no. This is a 300 page memoir of dieting. Took me by surprise. I would not have read it had I known. But Jillette pulls it off by simply being Penn Jillette. He is loud, obnoxious, rambunctious, sarcastic and he swears way too much for it to have any impact at all. But he’s entertaining, self-deprecating, highly opinionated, and funny. So it works. Much better than run of the mill diet books. Like most Americans, as he got older, Jillette got heavier. He noticed that while chocolate cake was a treat his mother made a few times a year, it was now available daily, if not hourly. There is junk food everywhere – at meetings, in the green room, backstage, and he ate basically all day long. He was sluggish, out of breath, and in denial. And he was on blood pressure meds and other joys. And this is someone who has never smoked, drank or taken recreational drugs. By losing a hundred pounds, he found he could give up the meds. He could taste tastes better and he lost his cravings for doughnuts and other such staples of SAD – the Standard American Diet. And with this book he has become an evangelist for it. To the the point of being aggravating. It’s a 300 page testimonial to Ray Cronise, who designed his program, and who is himself now leveraging off helping Penn Jillette lose that hundred pounds. It’s a multipronged multimedia marketing campaign, and that lessens the love, at least for me. For the millions of the overweight and obese, I hope it is inspirational. The book desperately needs editing. It is terribly repetitive. Jillette has no problem saying the same thing eight or ten times. It is possibly the longest diet memoir in history. It’s almost a page a day of his diet. But it’s from the heart, and it’s the usual honest, forthright and fearless Penn Jillette, so there’s little point going on about it. The message is terrific. Eat better and you will crave better foods. It’s a virtuous circle. You lose the extra weight, you feel more energetic, and your body thanks you by making life easier. But it’s not magic. David Wineberg