Description
Bloomsbury presents Sweat written and read by Bill Hayes
A New Yorker Best Book of the year
An Esquire Best Nonfiction Book of 2022
From Insomniac City author Bill Hayes who can tackle just about any subject in book form and make you glad he did SF Chroniclea cultural scientific literary and personal history of exercise
Exercise is our modern obsession and we have the fancy workout gear and fads from HIIT to spin classes to hot yoga to prove it Exercisea form of physical activity distinct from sports play or athleticswas an ancient obsession too but as a chapter in human history its been largely overlooked In Sweat Bill Hayes runs jogs swims spins walks bikes boxes lifts sweats and downwarddogs his way through the origins of different forms of exercise chronicling how they have evolved over time dissecting the dynamics of human movement
Hippocrates Plato Galen Susan B Anthony Jack LaLanne and Jane Fonda among many others make appearances in Sweat but chief among the historical figures is Girolamo Mercuriale a Renaissanceera Italian physician who aimed singlehandedly to revive the ancient Greek art of exercising through his 1569 book De arte gymnastica Though largely forgotten over the past five centuries Mercuriale and his illustrated treatise were pioneering and are brought back to life in the pages of Sweat Hayes ties his own personal experienceand oursto the cultural and scientific history of exercise from ancient times to the present day giving us a new way to understand its place in our lives in the 21st century
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