Andrea H. (Andrea) reviewed on 2/10/2006 + 85 more book reviews

At age 26, scrawny, Oxford-educated Samuel Fussell enetered a YMCA gym in New York to escape the terrors of big city life. Four years and 80 lbs. of firm, bulging muscle later, he was competing for bodybuilding titles in the "Iron Mecca" of Southern California--so weak from intense training and starvation he could barely walk. MUSCLE is the harrowing, often hilarious chronicle of Fussell's divine obsession, his search for identity in a bizarre, exxentric world of "health fascists," "gym bunnies" and "muscleheads"--and his devout, single-minded acceptance of illness, pain, nausea, and steroid-induced rage in his quest for the holy grail of physical perfection.

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