MYERSON, Daniel

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Columbia University, M.A., M.Phil.

ADDRESSES: Home—New York, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Sourcebooks, 1935 Brookdale Rd., Ste. 139, Naperville, IL 60563.

CAREER: Writer. Former teacher of comparative literature at Columbia University, New York University, and Bennington College.

AWARDS, HONORS: Ellis fellow, Columbia University.

WRITINGS:

(With Rosalie Kaufman and Didi Fujita) Yes You Can!: 22 Years as a Weight Watcher's Group Leader, Kensington (New York, NY), 1999.

Shakespeare, Workman (New York, NY), 2000.

Blood and Splendor: The Lives of Five Tyrants, from Nero to Saddam Hussein, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2001.

(With Jane Clemen, Dianna Kirkwood, and Bobbi Schell) The Town That Lost a Ton: How One Town Used the Buddy System to Lose 3,998 Pounds … and How You Can Too!, Sourcebooks (Naperville, IL), 2002.

WORK IN PROGRESS: The Linguist and the Emperor, a biography of Jean-Francois Champollion, the French scholar who decoded the Rosetta Stone.

SIDELIGHTS: Daniel Myerson is the coauthor of The Town That Lost a Ton: How One Town Used the Buddy System to Lose 3,998 Pounds … and How You Can Too!, an account of a program called Fight the Fat. Fight the Fat originated in 1998, through the efforts of Myerson's coauthors Jane Clemen, Dianna Kirkwood, and Bobbi Schell. These women, all employees at the Mercy Medical Center in Dyersville, Iowa, discovered that fully half of all local health problems were connected to excessive weight. A system was set up throughout the community to help keep everyone on-track with their fitness plans. Participants formed groups of six to ten members, which competed for weekly weight-loss totals. Even local businesses were drawn into Fight the Fat, with restaurants offering low-fat lunches to support program members.

The results were impressive, with the first 383 participants reporting a weight loss of almost two tons. Six months later, approximately forty-five percent had maintained that loss. Fight the Fat was later expanded to nearby towns. In addition to telling the story of Dyersville's experiment, The Town That Lost a Ton also outlines the precepts of Fight the Fat, and includes common-sense advice for weight loss.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Publishers Weekly, February 18, 2002, review of The Town That Lost a Ton: How One Town Used the Buddy System to Lose 3,998 Pounds … and How You Can Too!, p. 93.

USA Today, February 19, 2002, Nanci Hellmich, "In Iowa, Fighting Fat Is Tons o' Fun."