STRONGER: The Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives

In STRONGER: The Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives longtime Vanity Fair contributing editor Michael Joseph Gross tells a story spanning thousands of years and encompassing science, art, religion, politics, and social history. STRONGER describes the central role of muscle in human life and reveals the power of weight training to make us all stronger, as individuals and in community. “Think how the world could look different,” Gross writes, “if every time you heard someone say muscle, the first person you thought of was not some big guy who had taken steroids, but your grandmother.”

STRONGER is built around the stories of three inspiring individuals, presenting their personal transformations in the context of cultural forces they shaped and were shaped by. Charles Stocking: probably the only professor of classical Greek literature who holds a California junior state record in the squat. He worked his way through classics graduate school as a strength coach for UCLA Bruins and Olympic athletes. Now he holds a joint appointment in classics and kinesiology, the study of human bodily movement, at the University of Texas in Austin—a hybrid expertise so unusual, it may be unique. Jan Todd: a pioneer of women’s weight training, a pre-eminent scholar of physical culture. Her life shows that muscular strength and knowledge of strength training are essential to social equality and opportunity. Maria Fiatarone Singh: a medical doctor whose clinic, the Centre for Strong Medicine, prescribes weight training as part of routine care. As a professor at the University of Sydney Medical School, she runs randomized clinical trials that prove weight training is a type of medicine, preventing or treating many chronic diseases throughout the lifespan—including depression, type 2 diabetes, obesity, knee arthritis, hip fractures, and falls.

A longtime Vanity Fair contributing editor, Michael Joseph Gross 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.

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