Twenty years after publication of his bestselling Diet Revolution , Dr. Atkins is back and ready to raise a new ruckus. Once again, he contends that weight gain has little to do with fat intake; indeed, he will demonstrate “how much fat you can burn off, while eating liberally, even luxuriously.”

He encourages dieters to revel in traditional sources of protein like red meat, and to eat eggs and bacon for breakfast. Rapid weight loss, he promises, will be achieved through his 14-day “induction” diet, in which almost all carbohydrates are virtually banned from the table, forcing the body to go into a fat-burning metabolic state called ketosis.

He still urges broad-based vitamin supplements to take up any nutritional slack. So what’s changed in 20 years? Atkins says he now is more interested in “complete wellness” than in dropping pounds quickly. He stresses that the “induction” is not to be considered a lifetime regimen unless, of course, the dieter has particularly stubborn “metabolic resistance.”

Readers of his last book may notice some defensiveness – two decades of criticism clearly have taken their toll. Nonetheless, there is enough of the old Atkins to make this the most arrogant diet book to appear in a long while.