Contours of the Nation: Making Obesity and Imagining Canada, 1945–1970

"In the well-researched and well-argued book Contours of the Nation, McPhail persuasively argues how fatness was portrayed as a modern malady, one that was gendered feminine and white, and thus a concern of white women (who needed to fight their emotional obesity) and white men (who needed to purge themselves of ‘effete’ fatness). This book will be of real importance to the growing field of body and fat studies."

Amy E. Farrell, Departments of American Studies and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Dickinson College

"This up-to-date study usefully augments theories of fatness and interrogates the social construction of the obesity epidemic. Contours of the Nation prompts different types of question about this putative public health crisis with the benefit of a historical lens."

Lee Monaghan, Sociology, University of Limerick