Living large is a phrase that works on so many levels. It can mean, let's say, being expansive in personality, in graciousness, in generosity. It can mean being ultra-active, adventurous, open-minded, well-traveled. It can mean being fun, welcoming and extroverted. In Michael Berman's case, it means all of the above, as well as living life as a fat man. Those, by the way, are his words.
Chapter One Bookstore in Ketchum will welcome this largish man, 4:30 to 6 p.m., Monday, Aug. 14, for a reading and signing of his book, "Living Large: A Big Man's Ideas on Weight, Success, and Acceptance."
The part memoir, part self-help book deals with Berman's life growing up overweight and his lifelong struggles with his weight. In the meantime, of course, Berman became a highly successful though little known—to the general public—power broker in politics.
A lawyer by training, Berman, 67, is president of the Washington, D.C.-based Duberstein Group, a lobbying firm. He previously served as counsel and deputy chief of staff to Vice President Walter Mondale. He has been active in every presidential campaign since 1964 and is on the board of several nonprofit organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. He is also lecturer at American University's Public Affairs and Advocacy Institute, as well as at other universities.
Berman, who has been coming to Sun Valley for 26 years as part of the annual Allen & Co. media and technology conference, will be accompanied by his wife, Carol, who contributed her own chapter in the book.
So, how did a busy ("I manage to fill the days, as my wife says") political activist decide to write a book?
"I have gained and lost weight so many times. In the late '90s I was looking to lose weight again. There wasn't a new diet or fad I hadn't tried. It struck me that there were any number of books by and about fat women but none by and about a fat man. I wondered if I could write a book about being a fat man."
Berman was already fairly prepared to begin the process. He said he'd told his psychologist many stories about the pain he'd suffered in his life. He began researching the subject and eventually ended up, albeit years down the road since he mostly wrote on weekends, with an 800-page manuscript. Rodale picked up the book to publish but suggested he needed a professional writer to help edit it down to something workable. Laurence Shames, formerly the ethics columnist for Esquire magazine and author of other books, came on as a co-author. He lives in California and even after a year of working together the two writers didn't meet until after the book was finished.
"He told me he had a very heavy mother, so knew something about the issues," Berman said. "It's about how fatness affected my life. The underlying theme is, if you're a fat person, chances are you will always be a fat person, but you can live a good and fun life."
Through the years, Berman's weight changed mostly during presidential campaigns.
It was something about stress and food on the run. In 1983, he weighed 316. Not quite a year later he weighed 270, and then went to 300 in a couple months. By the end of 1984, when Mondale lost the presidential election, he weighed in at 332. At his thinnest (as an adult) he weighed 217. During the Clinton campaign he gained 54 pounds.
Berman knows every side of the issue. People now call him, stop in the corridors of power and send him e-mails and letters. He said he hears from people with all sorts of addictions and even a woman whose shyness was negating aspects of her life.
"I realized my fatness had an extraordinary effect on my relationship with Carol, he said. So I asked her to write something from her point of view. We do the reading together."
The day after the reading is their 41st anniversary, which is one reason they'll be in town.
"There have been interesting reactions to the book," he said. "People who know me say, 'We don't know this person.' All these things I'd said in the book were new. I wasn't talking about it. It turns out men don't talk about this stuff."
Here's the thing: Berman is a success story. Today he weighs a little more than 240. He is not tall, but his large nature is part of him. He laughs easily, and talks warmly about the people in his life and his experiences.
"It's been kind of ... fun," he said. "Well, yes. It has been fun. My life in politics has been in a non-public way. I was never on the record or on TV. Now this has been a totally difference experience, and it's been fun."
Berman has a Web site, mikelivinglarge.com, on which one can view photos and his size chart over the course of his life. It also has bonus content, things that didn't make it into the book, and a blog.
Michael and Carol Berman
?Living Large? by Michael S. Berman, 2006, Rodale $24.95.
