Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Judy Collins is a breathtakingly forthright and uncompromising writer. Cravings uses the same adroit prose and relentless soul searching found in her best songs and her six previous books (especially The Seven T's, about surviving her son's suicide). She begins by labeling herself "an active, working alcoholic with an eating disorder" and admits, "I am not a medical doctor, just a survivor who has learned more in my lifetime about eating disorders than most doctors."
Cravings is an unsparingly frank autobiography of Collins's multiple addictions (food, drugs, alcohol, prescription pills), multiple hospitalizations, bulimia and even a teenage suicide attempt. It is also a self-help guide with chapter-length profiles of "the gurus of dieting," including Robert Atkins, Andrew Weil, Jean Nidetch, Herman Tarnower, Linus Pauling and Adelle Davis, and the origins of both Alcoholics Anonymous and GreySheeters Anonymous (an organization helping people recover from compulsive overeating). Collins's knowledgeable and concise history of decades' worth of diet plans and medical theories elevates the book with first-hand evaluations of each one's strengths and weaknesses. By the time she finds a life plan (rather than diet) that works for her, readers who have been on similar quests will appreciate her exhaustive and useful search for a solution.
"We must each find our own way," Collins acknowledges. But readers who have struggled with their own addictions will feel less alone after reading Collins's eloquent, carefully researched and blazingly honest account of her potentially deadly 60-year struggle with food disorders. Cravings is a roadmap toward solutions that could save lives. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant