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  • Published: 8 June 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446466155
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288
Categories:

Muscle

A Writer's Trip Through a Sport with No Boundaries




Jon Hotten journeys deep into domain of bodybuilding, meeting ab obsessives, 'roid boys, and other equally bizarre characters in a book that offers an hilarious and at times disturbing insight into the world's weirdest sport.

Bodybuilding is the wildest, wierdest sport in the world, but it's more than just a sport. It's a whole way of life for the supermen who scale its Olympian heights. Muscle is a journey through a land of giants, men for whom life is given meaning by the pursuit of the perfect pec and who worship at the shrine of Schwartzenegger.

Jon Hotten has a 40-inch chest and 12-inch arms. Undaunted, he fights his unpromising genetics to hitch up with the bodybuilding circus, hanging out with the stars and legends, the casualties, gym rats and iron junkies. As his forbidding subjects open up, he discovers a story of unregulated excess, chemical mayhem and hard-won glory, a story for anyone who's ever looked in the mirror and wanted more...

  • Published: 8 June 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446466155
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288
Categories:

About the author

Jon Hotten

Jon Hotten is the author of four books, including Muscle and The Years of the Locust, and writes the popular cricket blog The Old Batsman. He co-wrote the award-winning documentary Death of a Gentleman, and his collaboration with the former England bowler Simon Jones, The Test, won the Wisden Almanack's Book of the Year award in 2016.

Also by Jon Hotten

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Praise for Muscle

A compelling and often alarming through the darker side of gym culture

Time Out

A compelling piece of reportage

Daily Telegraph

Is there not something heroic in the single-minded pursuit of the maximally developed human body? Jon Hotten's superb book offers some answers

Steven Poole, The Guardian

Like a hardboiled detective story... The first must-buy book on its subject

Men's Health

When it isn’t alarming, [it’s] merely amazing... Balanced, respectful, non-judgmental and rendered in an admirably muscular, entirely fat-free prose

Giles Smith, The Times