Overview

"From Insomniac City author Bill Hayes, ""who can tackle just about any subject in book form, and make you glad he did"" (SF Chronicle)--a cultural, scientific, literary, and personal history of exercise. Exercise is our modern obsession, and we have the ubiquitous gyms, fancy workout gear, and fads from HIIT to spin classes to hot yoga to prove it. Exercise--a form of physical activity distinct from sports, play, or athletics--was an ancient obsession, too, but as a chapter in human history, it's been largely overlooked. In Sweat, Bill Hayes runs, jogs, swims, spins, walks, bikes, boxes, lifts, sweats, and downward-dogs 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 Renaissance-era 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 experience--and ours--to 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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9781620402283

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Reviews

Bill Hayes has an unusual set of skills . . . He is part science writer, part memoirist, part culture explainer. * The New York Times * Read just 50 pages, and you'll see easily enough how Hayes is [Oliver] Sacks's logical complement. Though possessed of different temperaments, both are alive to difference, variety, the possibilities of our rangy humanity; both are avid chroniclers of our species . . . Frank, beautiful, bewitching. * Jennifer Senior, the New York Times on INSOMNIAC CITY * Playful and powerful . . .profoundly moving . . . Hayes writes with so much panache that reading this book is thrilling. * The Boston Globe on FIVE QUARTS * [A] beguiling brew of fascinating scientific facts and illuminating, poignant anecdotes . . . vital and pulsing with energy. * Entertainment Weekly on FIVE QUARTS * This touching memoir of the late neurologist Oliver Sacks, by a photographer and writer with whom he fell in love near the end of his life, turns a story of death into a celebration. * The New Yorker on INSOMNIAC CITY * [Insomniac City] seems written in heightened states of feeling that infuse every detail with meaning and transient beauty. * Shelf Awareness Best Adult Books of 2017 - Nonfiction * Insomniac City is a beautiful memoir in which Oliver Sacks comes wonderfully to life--a double portrait that also provides a vivid picture of New York City's neighborhoods and people. The ending is exquisitely wrought, heartrending and joyous. * Joyce Carol Oates on INSOMNIAC CITY * No lack of tenderness in Insomniac City, Bill Hayes's memoir of his life in New York with the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks. * The Guardian on INSOMNIAC CITY * As eloquent in its silences and visuals as it is in its telling of the secrets of the heart . . . The brilliance of Insomniac City is that almost Tolstoy-an directness and concretion of observation, both down-to-earth and downright visionary. * Bay Area Reporter on INSOMNIAC CITY * Remarkably poignant. Readers will find themselves wishing the two men had more time, but as Hayes makes clear, they wasted none of the time they had. * Publishers Weekly on INSOMNIAC CITY * A unique and exuberant celebration of life and love. * Kirkus on INSOMNIAC CITY * Buy a box of tissues and pray for snow: This is the perfect weekend February read, and will have you alternately bawling and giddily clapping your hands for the lovers that may not have had the time they deserved, but certainly made the best with the time that they had. * Newsweek, The Best New Book Releases for INSOMNIAC CITY * Like Patti Smith's haunting M Train, Hayes' book weaves seemingly disparate threads of memory into a kind of sanctuary--a secret place where one can shake off the treasured relics of past lives and prepare to be reborn anew. * San Francisco Chronicle on INSOMNIAC CITY * Hayes captures both the frenetic, exhilarating pace of New York City as well as the whimsy, fun and romance of the years he spent with Sacks. * New York Post on INSOMNIAC CITY * Insomniac City is resoundingly about life--about being wide awake to possibility, to the beauty of every fleeting moment. * Oprah.com on INSOMNIAC CITY * All laud and honor to Hayes. * The Washington Post on The Anatomist * Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, pursues sleep as avidly and lyrically as Nabokov pursued butterflies. * San Francisco Chronicle on Sleep Demons *

Bill Hayes has an unusual set of skills ... He is part science writer, part memoirist, part culture explainer. The New York Times All laud and honor to Hayes. The Washington Post on The Anatomist This beguiling brew of fascinating scientific facts and illuminating, poignant anecdotes makes Five Quarts something like blood itself: vital and pulsing with energy. Entertainment Weekly Playful and powerful ...profoundly moving ... Hayes writes with so much panache that reading this book is thrilling. The Boston Globe on Five Quarts Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, pursues sleep as avidly and lyrically as Nabokov pursued butterflies. San Francisco Chronicle on Sleep Demons

Author Information

Bill Hayes is the author of Insomniac City, How New York Breaks Your Heart, The Anatomist, Five Quarts, and Sleep Demons, each of which marvels at the human body and its miraculous abilities; this is the thread that runs through all of his writing. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction (2013-14) and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times. His work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, Salon, and The Threepenny Review, among other publications. He lives in New York. Visit his website at billhayes.com.

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