Pumping Iron

WHO ARE THEY AND WHY DO THEY DO IT? –these men who dedicate themselves to building bodies like Hellenistic statues; who crisscross the world competing for titles as grandiose yet as publicly uncelebrated (Mr. America, Mr. Universe, Mr. Olympia) as their gargantuan physiques; whose daily lives are as rigidly defined and regulated by their obsession to mold the ideal body as any other master athlete's is towards perfecting his craft. Yet, rather than the public acclaim that normally follows an athletic triumph, only their fellow muscle men know who they are and know the price they have paid to win their incredible bodies. Novelist Charles Gaines and photographer George Butler have spent the last two years trying to capture the essence of this strange, joyful, exotic world: “We have been to quite a few places tracking bodybuilders, seeing contests and putting together the materials here. If we felt at times a little like 19th-century explorers –like Doughty, perhaps, off trekking through Arabia –it was because we found bodybuilding to be as primeval and unmapped as parts of Labrador. Nobody, we discovered, had been back into it to send a report on what it was like. This struck us then as peculiar, and it still does.

In a matter of months, he grew from a dorky beanpole into a hulking behemoth, showing off his rock hard muscles first on the streets of New York City and then alongside his colorful gym-rat friends in strip clubs and in the homes of the gotham elite. It was a swinging time, when "Would you like to dance?" turned into "Your place or mine?" and the guys with the muscles had all the ladies -- until their bodies, like Solotaroff''s, completely shut down. But this isn't the gloom-and-doom addiction one might expect -- Solotaroff looks back at even his lowest points with a wicked sense of humor, and he sends up the disco era and its excess with all the kaleidoscopic detail of Boogie Nights or Saturday Night Fever. Written with candor and sarcasm, The Body Shop is a memoir with all the elements of great fiction and dazzlingly displays Paul Solotaroff's celebrated writing talent.

From the Hollywood superstar who sparked a bodybuilding revolution comes the definitive bodybuilding bible, now completely updated and revised to reflect the latest methods and research. 850 photos & illustrations.