Review by Booklist Review
From ancient Greek pankration (a brutal submission sport akin to modern mixed martial arts) to contemporary Peloton bicycling, Hayes (How We Live Now, 2020) surveys fitness training and its different forms and trends primarily in the Western world over the course of more than two-thousand years. He notes that exercise was initially intended to prepare soldiers for battle. Later on, other incentives to train emerged--health benefits, weight loss, sport, and body sculpting. It turns out that Plato was a skilled wrestler, and Kafka liked to wrestle with a neighbor. Einstein, Tolstoy, and Marie Curie bicycled. Freud took long walks. Hayes travels to London, Paris, Stockholm, Italy, and Greece to track the roots of exercise. Infatuated by an obscure 1573 book advocating exercise, De Arte Gymnastica by physician-scholar Girolamo Mercuriale, Hayes devotes a tad too much page space to it. Otherwise, Hayes entertainingly describes his adventures in the world of fitness, learning how to box at a pugilists' boot camp, swimming, running, and performing power yoga in a New York gym class. A brisk jaunt through the history of working out in Western civilization.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"If I were to trace a line back in time to the beginnings of exercise, where would I land?" asks journalist Hayes in this candid study (after How We Live Now). Inspired by a trip to the library in which he found accounts of writers explaining their fitness routines, Hayes surveys "descriptions of exercises going back to the fifth century B.C." He finds a kindred spirit in Renaissance physician Girolamo Mercuriale, who, in a time when "cathedrals replaced gymnasiums as sacred sites" was fascinated by the reverence the ancient Greeks and Romans held for the human body, viewing it not just as a means for movement but as its own form of art. Hayes follows in his footsteps, collecting musings from Plato (who suggested that women should exercise "together with the men"), Greek physician Galen (who critiqued fitness trainers for masquerading as medical experts), Franz Kafka (who wrestled with his neighbor every night), and Jane Fonda. With an introspective eye and dynamic prose, Hayes keeps his investigation grounded in his personal search for meaning: "Libraries, like gyms, have always been a refuge for me." It's a great--if niche--introduction to an action-packed part of history. Agent: Emily Forland, Brandt & Hochman Literary. (Jan.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
After writing books about the science of sleep, the history of human blood, and the story behind Gray's Anatomy--as well as a warm and poignant memoir of his late partner, Oliver Sacks--Hayes's latest work is about the experience of exercise. He describes starting his research at a local library, only to find that the older books he was interested in were no longer around. This led Hayes to the New York Academy of Medicine Historical Collections library, where he was introduced to what he calls a magical book from the Renaissance, De Arte Gymnastica by Girolamo Mercuriale (1573). Hayes followed Mercuriale's lead to libraries and archives in England and France and even on a trip to Greece to visit the sites of the first Olympic games. Hayes went on to explore great writers' texts about exercise, including musings by Greek poet Hesiod and Bohemian novelist Franz Kafka. Hayes's book brings the narrative up to the 20th century with an exploration of modern exercise gurus like Jack LaLanne and Jane Fonda. VERDICT At once a book about exercise history, and a travelogue, a literary discovery tour, and another of Hayes's personal and exhilarating memoirs.--Marcia G. Welsh, formerly at Dartmouth Coll. Lib., Hanover, NH
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Obsessed by both working out and its history, Hayes writes a book that combines them. A successful freelance author, journalist, photographer, and editor, the author is not shy about describing his lifetime preoccupation with running, gym workouts, and aerobics, with diversions into boxing, swimming, and biking. After recording exercises favored by such towering historical figures as Einstein ("didn't look like a strapping athlete, but he didn't look like he never exercised either"), Tolstoy, and Kafka, Hayes delves more deeply into the subject. He hit the jackpot in the rare book room of the New York Academy of Medicine, discovering a huge, brilliantly illustrated edition of "De arte gymnastica (The Art of Gymnastics), dated 1573. The author was Girolamo Mercuriale, a name previously unknown to me." As Hayes learned, the book was an effort to revive Greek and Roman love of exercise. Reappearing throughout this book, De arte provides much of the inspiration for Hayes' exploration. "In ancient Greece and in the early Roman Empire," he writes, "there was at least one gymnasium in every town. The gymnasium was as much a part of culture and society as a theater and marketplace." Authorities from Hippocrates to Plato extolled exercise, a point of view snuffed out by the rise of Christianity, when "Cathedrals replaced gymnasiums as sacred sites; it was the holy spirit--the soul--that was now to be glorified, not the body." By the 16th century, Renaissance humanism was reviving the former view. This book is largely a record of the author's travels across the world, where he visited libraries and interviewed scholars and scientists or simply people he encountered along the way. He recounts exercise history and how he continued his daily workouts despite often primitive local facilities, and he interjects episodes from his past that are more or less related to the active life. Fittingly, he ends at the Olympia site in Greece. An entertaining hodgepodge of autobiography, travelogue, and history. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
