Weight and war, pounds and politics—the world balances uneasily on these two thorns. Humans are caught in a food vice that might seem tangential to catastrophe and global mayhem. In The Weight of Words author Sandra Humble Johnson suggests solutions for taking pounds off and keeping them off. At the same time, she reveals her own jagged adjustment against the backdrop of a city perfumed, wealthy, and safe.

Johnson, who traveled from a quiet Ohio Mennonite town to glamorous and outrageous Dubai on the Arabian Peninsula, deals firsthand with physical and cultural displacement. As a university professor hired to help establish a college of arts and sciences for Emirati women, she understands that words alter lives. Language shapes us. After losing weight and then maintaining her new shape, Johnson reshaped images of dangerous Arabs in desert tents into the upscale, burgeoning glitz of Dubai. The Weight of Words narrates this adventure of mind and body.

Americans and Middle Easterners are obsessed with what they consume. With obesity and mistrust playing havoc with survival on this small planet, The Weight of Words provides help where it's needed most.