This image is the cover for the book Elephant in the Room

Elephant in the Room

An NPR Best Book of the Year: This story of a man’s reckoning with his 460-pound body is “warm and funny and honest . . . genuinely unputdownable” (Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times–bestselling author of Romantic Comedy).

When he was almost fifty years old, journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist Tommy Tomlinson weighed an astonishing—and dangerous—460 pounds, at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, unable to climb a flight of stairs without having to catch his breath, or travel on an airplane without buying two seats. Raised in a family that loved food, he’d been aware of the problem for years, seeing doctors and trying diets from the time he was a preteen. But nothing worked, and every time he tried to make a change, it didn’t go the way he planned—in fact, he wasn’t sure that he really wanted to change.

In The Elephant in the Room, Tomlinson chronicles his lifelong battle with weight—and hits the road to meet other members of the plus-sized tribe in an attempt to understand how, as a nation, we got to this point. From buying a Fitbit to contemplating the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, America’s “capital of food porn,” Tomlinson takes a candid and sometimes brutal look at the everyday experience of being constantly aware of your size. He confronts these issues head-on and recounts the practical steps he has to take to lose weight by the end—in a memoir that will resonate with anyone who’s grappled with addiction, shame, or self-consciousness.

“What could have been a wallow in memoir self-pity is raised to art by Tomlinson’s wit and prose.” —Rolling Stone

“Heartbreaking and laugh-out-loud . . . I could not turn the pages fast enough.” —Beth Macy, author of Dopesick

“Inspirational . . . witty and punchy.” —The New York Times

Tommy Tomlinson

Tommy Tomlinson is the author of The Elephant in the Room, a memoir about being overweight in America. He’s the host of the podcast SouthBound in partnership with WFAE, Charlotte’s NPR station. He has written for publications including Esquire, ESPN the Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Forbes, Garden & Gun, and many others. He spent twenty-three years as a reporter and local columnist for the Charlotte Observer, where he was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in commentary. His stories have been chosen twice for the Best American Sports Writing series (2012 and 2015) and he also appears in the anthology America’s Best Newspaper Writing. He teaches magazine writing at Wake Forest University and has taught at colleges, workshops, and conferences across the country. He also has a Substack called The Writing Shed. Tommy and his wife, Alix Felsing, live in Charlotte with Alix’s mom and a cat.

Simon & Schuster