Secret Dead Blog Recomends: Dave White's Debut!

There's rumor of a blog-wide Dave White roast today, but I'm not going to participate. Inside of snarky jokes, we should be heaping praise upon Dave and his debut. It's not every day a middle school teacher from Clifton, N.J. breaks into the big leagues of New York publishing with a revealing, honest, and ultimately, life-affirming self-help book like When One Man Diets (Three Rivers Press, $13.95).

I never thought Dave was particularly fat. A little big-boned maybe, but nothing that would suggest he needed a radical fitness and weight loss regimen like the one he details in When One Man Diets. But when Dave's good friend Gerry dies of a heart attack due to obesity, Dave makes a promise that leaves him no choice, and soon he finds himself searching for the ultimate fat-burning solution that will help him release the lean, strong body inside himself.

Dave would like nothing better than to crawl back into a donut box and forget he ever heard of carbs or body fat indices or ab crunches. But now the only way to stay in shape is to keep running forward--and face the demons of his fast food-snarfing past.

In When One Man Diets, Dave White bravely shares his weight-loss secrets. If there's ever a book with "Oprah" all the hell over it, it's this book.

One thing I can't figure out: what the cover image has to do with anything. You'd think Three Rivers would maybe show before-and-after shots of Dave, or a photo of Dave smiling and sitting down to a meal of baked salmon, rice and steamed carrots, or something. Instead there's this creepy, almost noirish photo of a car at night. Perhaps this is meant to symbolize Dave's nightly runs to KFC, pre-WOMD?

Ultimately it doesn't matter, because as Dave White shows us, it's what's on the inside that counts. Er, what used to be inside. After you lose some of it. Um.... okay.

Great job, Dave!