A funny, informative history of a true American eccentric and the national preoccupation with health and fitness.
The long life and strange times of the forgotten Father of Physical Culture.
New York magazine columnist Adams spins a lively yarn in this biography of pioneering health-and-fitness guru Bernarr Macfadden. In the first half of the 20th century, he was one of the most famous men in America, a confidant of Rudolph Valentino and Eleanor Roosevelt celebrated and scorned in equal measure for his radical theories—which earned him the undying enmity of the American Medical Association—and his tabloid publishing empire. In brisk prose, Adams charts the remarkable trajectory of sickly orphan Bernard McFadden (he changed his name to make it sound more distinctive), a singularly dynamic and driven character devoted to the idea that a healthy mind, body and spirit are moral imperatives and attainable only through severe calorie restriction and grueling, regular physical exercise. With the passion of a true zealot, Macfadden promulgated his theories through his vastly influential magazine, Physical Culture, and an ever-expanding empire of health farms and sanitariums. His efforts profoundly influenced the national psyche, birthing the multibillion-dollar fitness industry that flourishes to this day. Equally fascinating is Macfadden’s publishing legacy, which included the ahead-of-their-time salacious tabloids The New York Evening Graphic (Walter Winchell and Ed Sullivan were on the writing staff) and True Story (the source of most of Macfadden’s fortune). He also discovered and promoted legendary bodybuilder Charles Atlas. Adams paints Macfadden as a bizarre, outsized figure: Married four times, he philandered well into old age; a multimillionaire, he dressed like a hobo and regularly walked dozens of miles per day through the streets of New York…barefoot; he practiced his theories of eugenics on his children; and, after repeatedly failing to attain high political office, he founded his own religion, “Cosmotarianism.”
A funny, informative history of a true American eccentric and the national preoccupation with health and fitness.Pub Date: March 17, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-059475-6
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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