Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater by Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni delivers a humorous account of his love for food, his compulsive overeating—he went on his first diet at the age of 8—and his five years as a restaurant critic for The New York Times.

(Penguin Press, 352 pages, $25.95)

Frank Bruni laughed when he received a call from New York Times headquarters asking if he’d be interested in becoming the paper’s top restaurant critic. Sure, he loved food. The proof was in the size 42 pants he’d graduated to while covering George W. Bush’s first presidential campaign, when he ballooned to 270 pounds. Compulsive overeating had been a habit since before he could remember. At 18 months, he wolfed down two hamburgers and vomited willfully when his mother refused to cook him a third. He flopped at his first diet at 8, binged and purged his way through college, and was just overcoming the shame of his Bush bloat when the restaurant beat was waved before his nose.

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