Muscle: A Writer's Trip Through a Sport with No Boundaries

Description

John 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. In the mad, bad muscle game, anything goes...Bodybuilding is the wildest, weirdest 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 altar of Arnie. Beginning with the shocking death of Andreas Munzer, a fallen hero with a 58-inch chest and 21-inch arms, and ending with the glitz and drama of the Mr Olympia, as the biggest men on earth fight for bodybuilding's ultimate prize, Muscle hangs out at the gyms and the shows, going head to head with the stars and legends - Dorian Yates, Ronnie Coleman, Jay Cutler and the Terminator himself - and the casualties, gym rats and iron junkies...Jon Hotten has a 40-inch chest and 12-inch arms. Undaunted, he fights his unpromising genetics to hitch up with the bodybuilding circus, all the way from London to Las Vegas, Amsterdam to Arnie's place. As his forbidding subjects open up, confiding their fears and ambitions and revealing the truth about their lives, he discovers a story of unregulated excess, chemical mayhem and hardwon glory. Taking beef as its motif, Muscle is a book for everyone who's ever looked in the mirror and wanted more.

John Hotten is the author of Unlicensed- Random Notes from Boxing's Underbelly and The Years of the Locust- A True Story of Murder, Money and Mayhem in the Last Age of Boxing, which was longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award. A former editor of Kerrang!, he has written for the Guardian, the Sunday Times, Esquire and Punch.

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 * 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 * A compelling and often alarming through the darker side of gym culture * Time Out * A compelling piece of reportage * Daily Telegraph * Like a hardboiled detective story... The first must-buy book on its subject * Men's Health *