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Louise Foxcroft's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Louise Foxcroft recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Louise Foxcroft's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1

Emperors of Dreams

Recommended by Louise Foxcroft, and 1 others.

Louise FoxcroftJay’s book is in the same area as my first book The Making of Addiction, and is a really accessible read. He does a calm run-through of luxurious drug use and orthodox drug use. One is accepted and one is not. He looks at the way our bodies are policed, and how our cultural attitudes and policies are based on ideas influenced by fear and intolerance. (Source)

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2

Fat Is a Feminist Issue

When it was first published, Fat Is A Feminist Issue became an instant classic and it is as relevant today as it was then. Reflecting on our increasingly diet and body-obsessed society, Susie Orbach's new introduction explains how generations of women and girls are growing up absorbing the eating anxieties around them. In an age where women want to be sexy, nurturing, domestic goddesses, confident at work, and feminine too, the twenty-first-century woman is poorly armed for survival. Never before has the Fat Is A Feminist Issue revolution been more in need of revival.
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Recommended by Louise Foxcroft, and 1 others.

Louise FoxcroftThis book isn’t entirely to do with the history of medicine, but it is relevant. I think it is still as important today as when it first came out in 1978. Orbach exposes our obsession with our bodies and the narcissistic nature of society. You could say that worrying and obsessing about our size and shape, how it might be improved, what diet we should go on and what surgery we should have for it,... (Source)

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3

Tormented Hope

Tormented Hope is a book about mind and body, fear and hope, illness and imagination. It explores, in the stories of nine individuals, the relationship between mind and body as it is mediated by the experience, or simply the terror, of being ill. And in an intimate investigation of those nine lives, it shows how the mind can make a prison of the body, by distorting our sense of ourselves as physical beings. Brian Dillon, whose brilliant debut "In the Dark Room" established him as an uncommonly intelligent and fluent explorer of the realm where ideas and emotions overlap, looks at nine... more
Recommended by Louise Foxcroft, and 1 others.

Louise FoxcroftThis is a great book. I think Brian Dillon is also very good at relating things to the personal. He looks with enormous insight at the idea of hypochondria – also an ancient notion. Before Freud, it was thought to have to do with the digestive system. After Freud, it became more of a psychological condition and an illness in itself. Hypochondria has become a bit of a pejorative term. We tend to... (Source)

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4
Recommended by Louise Foxcroft, and 1 others.

Louise FoxcroftI could have chosen any book by Porter, but this one is my favourite. Roy Porter died far too young. He was the most exuberant man, and the generosity and excitement that he had in everyday life enthused all his books. He was meticulous in his research, and he wrote the most fantastically lucid prose. It was the most elegant stuff, and he was a historian who really taught me how to think. (Source)

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5

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were—and still are. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that kind of book. When it was first published in 1962, it was a landmark event in the history and philosophy of science. Fifty years later, it still has many lessons to teach.

With The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn challenged...
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Mark ZuckerbergIt's a history of science book that explores the question of whether science and technology make consistent forward progress or whether progress comes in bursts related to other social forces. I tend to think that science is a consistent force for good in the world. I think we'd all be better off if we invested more in science and acted on the results of research. I'm excited to explore this... (Source)

Tim O'ReillyThe Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn introduced the term "paradigm shift" to describe the changeover from Ptolemaic to Copernican astronomy. But the book is far more than a classic in the history of science. It's also a book that emphasizes how what we already believe shapes what we see, what we allow ourselves to think. I've always tried to separate seeing itself from... (Source)

Andra ZahariaI’ve gone through quite a few experiences brought on or shaped by what I’ve learned from books. A particularly unexpected one happened in college when our public relations teacher asked us to read a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. As a humanities student, you can imagine that I wasn’t thrilled I’d have to read a book on science, but what followed blew my mind... (Source)

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