{"product_id":"stronger-isbn-9780525955238","title":"Stronger","description":"\u003cb\u003eA groundbreaking, richly informative exploration of the central role of muscle in human life and health, \u003ci\u003eStronger \u003c\/i\u003esounds an urgent call for each of us to recognize muscle as “the vital, inextricable and effective partner of the soul.”\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e “Even if you’ve never picked up a weight—\u003ci\u003eStronger \u003c\/i\u003eis for you.” —Arnold Schwarzenegger\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eStronger\u003c\/i\u003e tells a story of breathtaking scope, from the battlefields of the Trojan War in Homer’s \u003ci\u003eIliad\u003c\/i\u003e, where muscles enter the scene of world literature; to the all-but-forgotten Victorian-era gyms on both sides of the Atlantic, where women build strength and muscle by lifting heavy weights; to a retirement home in Boston, where a young doctor makes the astonishing discovery that frail ninety-year-olds can experience the same relative gains of strength and muscle as thirty-year-olds if they lift weights.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e These surprising tales play out against a background of clashing worldviews, an age-old competition between athletic trainers and medical doctors to define our understanding and experience of muscle. In this conflict, muscle got typecast: Simplistic binaries of brain versus brawn created a persistent prejudice against muscle, and against weight training, the type of exercise that best builds muscular strength and power. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eStronger\u003c\/i\u003e shows muscle and weight training in a whole new light. With warmth and humor, Michael Joseph Gross blends history and firsthand reporting in an inspiring narrative packed with practical information based on rigorous scientific studies from around the world. The research proves that weight training can help prevent or treat many chronic diseases and disabilities throughout the lifespan, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, and depression. \u003ci\u003eStronger\u003c\/i\u003e reveals how all of us, from elite powerlifters to people who have never played sports at all, can learn to lift weights in ways that yield life's ultimate prize: the ability to act upon the world in the ways that we wish.“When I heard about \u003ci\u003eStronger\u003c\/i\u003e, I was in heaven. The history, science, and practice of lifting weights, all in one place? That’s my kind of book! It tells the inspiring stories of athletes and scholars such as my friend Jan Todd, the pioneer of women’s powerlifting, and it shows the powerful research that proves that building strength and muscle could be a type of medicine for all kinds of people. Even if you’ve never picked up a weight—\u003ci\u003eStronger\u003c\/i\u003e is for you. But be careful: Something tells me that by the time you finish, you’ll find plenty of reasons to try out resistance training.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eArnold Schwarzenegger, former Governor of California, seven-time Mr. Olympia, and bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eBe Useful\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“At the intersection of the biomedical and social sciences... colorfully traces a historical tug-of-war between athletic trainers and bodybuilders, on the one end, and medical doctors, on the other.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The very definition of cutting-edge… \u003ci\u003eStronger \u003c\/i\u003eis an elegant, sophisticated, and substantial piece of work… It’s absolutely enthralling, written with a masterly zip and zing — an eye for the arresting visual detail and an ear for the striking quotation.\"\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe American Spectator\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[E]ngaging... draws on the expertise of physicians, historians, athletes and others to emphasize the complexity of muscles.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eNature, \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Best Science Picks\"\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eStronger \u003c\/i\u003eis at once a meditation on the relationship between soul and body and a practical guide to growing old. It is thoughtful, richly reported and totally compelling. The first thing I did after finishing it was buy a set of weights.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eElizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestseller \u003ci\u003eThe Sixth Extinction\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I started lifting weights in 1956, when I was fourteen. When \u003ci\u003eStronger\u003c\/i\u003e is in readers’ hands, I’ll be eighty-three—I’ll still be lifting. From the \u003ci\u003eHistories \u003c\/i\u003eby Herodotus to \u003ci\u003ePumping Iron\u003c\/i\u003e—from Ancient Greece to Arnold Schwarzenegger—this is the enlightening history of weight training. I’m a full-time writer. I spend every day sitting on my glutes. Do your glutes a favor—read \u003ci\u003eStronger.\u003c\/i\u003e”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003eJohn Irving, National Book Award winning author of \u003ci\u003eThe World According to Garp,\u003c\/i\u003e Oscar winning screenwriter of \u003ci\u003eThe Cider House Rules\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Last Chairlift\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Through meticulous research and first-rate storytelling, \u003ci\u003eStronger\u003c\/i\u003e will reshape how you think about health, longevity, and what matters as we age. Cardio, core, yoga exercises—sure they're good for you. But this book shows how developing and maintaining muscle might just be the most important thing a person can do to preserve and protect their health.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eGuy Raz, creator and host of the podcasts \u003ci\u003eHow I Built This\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eWow in the World\u003c\/i\u003e, and author of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling books inspired by both podcasts\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“If history, anthropology, and lifting are down your alley, you will enjoy \u003ci\u003eStronger. \u003c\/i\u003eFind out how our ancestors have shaped our views on muscle and strength in unexpected ways.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Pavel Tsatsouline, founder and CEO of StrongFirst.com and author of \u003ci\u003eKettlebell Simple \u0026amp; Sinister\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“Stronger \u003c\/i\u003eis a pioneering narrative—a fascinating exploration, years in the making, of a hugely important part of human life and culture. It raises the question that great books do: Why has this not been written before?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—William Langewiesche, \u003cb\u003enationally bestselling author of the National Book Critic’s Circle Award finalist \u003ci\u003eAmerican Ground\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“\u003c\/i\u003eIn these burning times, \u003ci\u003eStronger \u003c\/i\u003eoffers a reminder that we can still have influence on the most vital and intimate world we inhabit from cradle to grave: our bodies. Reading it, one has to wonder, who wouldn't want to be strong?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Rick Bass, author of \u003ci\u003eWith Every Great Breath: New and Selected Essays\u003c\/i\u003e and the Story Prize winner \u003ci\u003eFor a Little While: New and Collected Stories\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Scholarly \u003cb\u003e— \u003c\/b\u003efascinating and entertaining… People who have never lifted will be encouraged to try it. And people who already train, as they read, will have moments of great resonance with the material.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Clarence Bass, longtime \u003ci\u003eMuscle \u0026amp; Fitness\u003c\/i\u003e columnist and author of \u003ci\u003eRipped: The Sensible Way to Achieve Ultimate Muscularity\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Carefull attention to how the story of muscle intersects with the lives of women... makes \u003ci\u003eStronger \u003c\/i\u003esuch a powerful and necessary book.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Iris Jamahl Dunkle, author of \u003ci\u003eRiding Like the Wind\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A vigorous examination of the history and science of strength training… this delivers.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An engagingly learned look at the human body.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus, \u003c\/i\u003eNonfiction Must-Reads\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A convincing argument for appreciating and maintaining your muscles and health.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eA longtime Vanity Fair contributing editor, \u003cb\u003eMichael Joseph Gross\u003c\/b\u003e has published investigative reporting, essays, and books about culture, technology, politics, religion, and business. He was raised in rural Illinois and lives in New York City.Introduction\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLifting a calf, turning a page, and every other voluntary movement happens by means of muscle.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo matter how you think of yourself—strong or weak, large or small—you are substantially made of muscle. Most adults are made up of at least 30 percent muscle. Many of us are closer to 40 percent muscle, and a few of us exceed 50 percent. Muscle is also one of the body’s most plastic tissues, changing its size and properties based on people’s habits of diet and care, work and rest. Human skeletal muscle is a primary organ of metabolism, the chemical processes that sustain life. When a child is growing, when an adult is injured or sick, and as everybody executes the constant processes of cellular wear and tear and repair, proteins in muscle do the work of generation, healing, and regeneration. Muscle contraction is the basis of an extensive signaling network in the body, too. Working muscles produce secretions called myokines that circulate to the brain, liver, heart, intestines, and other organ systems, regulating biological functions that make for thriving life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom early adolescence onward, the kind of muscular work shown\u003cbr\u003ein the myth of Milo and prescribed by Thomas DeLorme can yield a wealth of benefits. Progressive resistance exercise can build confidence and reduce anxiety; improve bone density, blood pressure, aerobic fitness, body composition, metabolic health, insulin sensitivity, depression, and sleep; prevent and treat type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease; reduce the risk of several types of cancer; increase resistance to injury; and decrease the likelihood of falls and of osteoporotic fracture. In old age, muscle increasingly decides who can live independently and who cannot. Your ability to stand and go where you want to go—your independence, autonomy, and agency—your effectiveness in the world—will depend on muscle, to the last day of your life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn recent decades, we have all witnessed what can happen when people make a practice of lifting weights. The bodies of public figures in many fields have been transformed: Derek Jeter, Serena Williams, and Cris‑ tiano Ronaldo; Madonna, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift; Marc Jacobs, Oprah Winfrey, and Jeff Bezos; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Michelle Obama, and Volodymyr Zelensky. At the same time, a related change has happened in the general population. Signs of the change emerge from almost thirty years of data collected by the Centers for Disease Control between 1988 and 2017, in surveys that asked American adults what forms of physical activity or exercise they spent the most time doing. Among more than fifty types of activities tracked by these surveys over that whole period—from bowling to fishing to running—the one that grew most popular most quickly was lifting weights. The number of people who said they lifted weights more often than they did other types of exercise increased by more than 34 percent in those years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut on the other hand, the absolute number of people who made lifting weights their main form of exercise remained low. That number grew barely more than 1 percent in thirty years—from 3.2 percent to 4.3 percent of the population. And national physical activity surveys in many countries find that vast majorities of people do little or no exercise of any kind that would strengthen their muscles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe truth is, few of us take much active interest in our own muscles, except for the young and athletic, whose interest tends to be tied to relatively short‑term payoffs: winning games, or dates, or clicks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt can be easy to lose sight of muscle’s importance in every stage and every function of the widest range of lives because muscle is easy to typecast. Just hearing the word \u003ci\u003emuscle \u003c\/i\u003ecan trigger instant thoughts of bodybuilders, or combat‑sport athletes like boxers and mixed martial artists, or elite soldiers in actual military combat, or influencers and models and movie stars, exuding erotic privilege. For many people, the word \u003ci\u003emuscle \u003c\/i\u003ecan sound inherently sinister, because muscle was glorified in pseudoscientific theories and ideologies that have been used to justify sexism, racism, colonialism, authoritarian rule, and mass atrocities. Books that investigate muscle’s meanings to aesthetics, sex, violence, injustice, and oppression do valuable work. But this book does a different kind of work, focused on the long‑term, existential significance of muscles in our lives: the unnerving fact that muscles—and our individual and collaborative abilities to exert muscular strength—modulate our power to act upon the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1937, Charles Scott Sherrington, the Nobel Prize–winning British neurophysiologist whose lifework was to map the nervous system’s amalgamation with the muscular system, reflected that “the importance of muscular contraction to us can be stated by saying that all man can do is to move things, and his muscular contraction is his sole means thereto.” If we updated the gendered language, a more accurate one line summary of muscle’s central role in our lives would be hard to devise. And so, with a slight paraphrase—to open that statement wide, to invite everybody in—Sherrington’s words bear repeating: . . . \u003ci\u003eall we can do is to move things, and our muscular contraction is our sole means thereto.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTry to imagine: How would muscle look different to you, if you had never heard of Arnold Schwarzenegger or The Rock?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOr if that’s not possible to imagine, try this instead: Think how the \u003ci\u003eworld \u003c\/i\u003ecould look different if every time you heard someone say \u003ci\u003emuscle\u003c\/i\u003e, the first person you thought of was not some big guy who had taken steroids, but your grandmother.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMaking that shift is one of the best things you can do for yourself and for the people you love. Status quo views of muscle, by contrast, keep people stuck in destructive zero‑sum games, pitting aspects of ourselves against each other—the superficial and the serious, brain versus brawn—even though significant evidence shows these conflicts have no legitimate basis in biology.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe brain’s posterior cingulate cortex, the seat of empathy, self awareness, and emotional memory—which is also the first part of the brain to atrophy in Alzheimer’s disease, even before people show any signs of memory loss—“actually increases in size when you do weight‑ lifting exercise,” according to one of the researchers who discovered this, at the University of Sydney in Australia.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor ages, though, most people have been raised on mind‑body dualism, the notion that experience can be neatly divided into the physical and mental, or spiritual. Getting ourselves out of the rut requires some reflection.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOften attributed to René Descartes, the seventeenth‑century French philosopher, mind‑body dualism has ancient roots. By the fourth century bc, in Athens, Plato taught that a person’s body, or \u003ci\u003eso¯ma\u003c\/i\u003e, contains and is activated by an incorporeal faculty, a kind of spirit, or \u003ci\u003epsyche¯\u003c\/i\u003e, that is superior to the body. Plato said the body is like a tomb or prison for the soul.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMind‑body dualism became a tenet of scientific medicine and of the medical dogma that moderate care of each—cultivating a sound mind in a sound body—is the key to health. One of history’s most influential doctors, Galen of Pergamon, who lived in the Roman empire during the second century ad, was fanatic about moderation. Galen denounced athletics as bad for health because athletic competition involved striving for excellence, the opposite of moderation, for the sake of winning a prize.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGalen savaged those who disagreed with him, and he saved special venom for big men with lots of meat on their bones. Such athletes “do not even know that they have a soul,” he wrote. “For they are so busy accumulating a mass of flesh and blood that their soul is extinguished as if beneath a heap of filth, and they are incapable of thinking about anything clearly; instead they become mindless like the irrational animals.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAncient medicine’s antipathy to athletics developed in part because of muscle, Galen’s writings imply, and the prejudice endured. In World War II, it was an obstacle for Thomas DeLorme. When the doctor prescribed weight training to rehabilitate injured soldiers, medical colleagues disapproved. A few years later, DeLorme wrote that “the mere mention of large muscles provokes in most people, and especially those of the medical profession, a decided antipathy” because “almost everyone is bewildered and repulsed by the so‑called body builder.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the 1950s and 1960s, when mainstream science showed that physical activity is imperative for everyone who wants to live a long and healthy life, positive messages about cardiovascular fitness were commonly joined with negative judgments about muscular fitness. One of the twentieth century’s most popular books about exercise, published in 1968, was \u003ci\u003eAerobics \u003c\/i\u003eby Kenneth Cooper, then a thirty‑seven‑year‑old United States military physician. \u003ci\u003eAerobics \u003c\/i\u003edenigrated muscular fitness and said that lifting weights was “like putting a lovely new coat of paint on an automobile that really needs an engine overhaul.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCooper articulated a common prejudice against weight training, based on cardiac concerns, that evidence would later refute. By the time he turned seventy years old, the author of \u003ci\u003eAerobics \u003c\/i\u003ewas committed to a regimen of lifting weights.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIndividuals can change more rapidly than institutions and cultures, however. Still today, the medical profession shows relatively little interest in muscle. There is no medical specialty for the treatment of muscle, few doctors routinely measure or assess patients’ muscle mass or strength, and few medical schools require their students to take any classes about any kind of exercise. Government, health insurance, and hospital policies in most countries make little to no provision for doctors to prescribe exercise to patients, especially in an ongoing way, even for conditions proven to be more effectively prevented or treated by exercise than by drugs or surgeries.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAthletics, on the other hand, especially since the 1970s, has become thoroughly, intensively muscle‑conscious, as weight training has helped propel the steady advancements of world‑record‑breaking performance. In sports from swimming to stock‑car racing, lifting can make the difference between winning and losing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDivergent views of muscle in medicine and athletics describe a contrast of values: steadiness versus striving. Doctors want patients to keep steady regimens, in line with ideals of stable, constant, balanced health.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCoaches want athletes to strive for peak condition on competition day, to help them win the prize of victory.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom muscle’s point of view, it’s not possible to take sides in these disputes. To stay well, even at a baseline level, all the way through life, muscles need to have regular chances to really shine, to show how hard they’re able to work. They also need to rest and recover: Even the strongest muscles can’t be excellent all the time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe mind‑body problem is no problem for muscle—it is nonsense— because muscle stops working and fades out of existence without constant interaction with the neurological system. Mind and muscle are not enemies. They’re the best of friends.","brand":"Dutton","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303706185957,"sku":"NP9780525955238","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780525955238.jpg?v=1767737450","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/stronger-isbn-9780525955238","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}