Sweat

Reviews

Charming and idiosyncratic... a distinctive, often moving blend of historical and memoirist writing. An enthusiasm it’s impossible not to share...Erudite, ludic, eccentric, energetic and historically transporting, it’s like falling through a gym and landing in a joust. At its best, Hayes’ book reframes exercise as a deep series of questions thinkers and scientists have been contemplating for thousands of years. . . . it's a thrill to see them gathered in one place. I was riveted by Sweat and its extraordinary tale of the ups and downs of exercise over millennia. Who knew? If there is one person in the modern world who can reinvigorate Mercuriale’s enormous unfinished labor and bridge the physical, the philosophical, and the poetic — bridge Whitman and Warhol, Plato and Peloton, Kafka and Curie, Tennessee Williams and Serena Williams; bridge the ‘immediate bodily now’ of exercise with ‘the wisdom of the past that had faded from living memory’ — it is Bill Hayes. And so he does, in Sweat. Bill Hayes’ peripatetic inquiry into the history of exercise is a delight for anyone who loves a good search for a missing manuscript, as well as anyone who loves being ‘so drenched in sweat as to feel amphibious.’ And if those predilections happen to overlap for you, hang onto your Bosu ball—you’re in for a treat. Hayes weaves his riveting findings in the archives with a revelatory memoir of physical exertion that begins to answer that most human of questions: what does the body mean? At its heart, [Sweat] is a deeply personal book about the universal subject of humans attempting to grapple with the meaning of their own physicality. . . . an erudite memoir of a lifelong fitness enthusiast who is looking to place his own forays into weightlifting, swimming, boxing, and yoga in the context of a historical tradition that spans from Hippocrates to Jane Fonda. Perhaps because exercise is such a universal—and universally humbling—part of our lives, Sweat does, seemingly effortlessly, what all good history books should do: take the past and make it vastly more human. An appealing, essential addition to the shelf. . . Hayes brings his resilient good nature and charming candor to the page. . . Whether in a library, a gym or the Grecian ruins of an ancient locker room, Hayes captures the majesty of bodies in motion. Hayes blends science, travel, history, and memoir into a thoroughly engaging, and idiosyncratic, narrative inquiry into ‘exercise'... Hayes writes with panache as he crosses three continents in search of fitness routines past and present, from fencing to Jane Fonda. Hayes entertainingly describes his adventures in the world of fitness, learning how to box at a pugilists' boot camp, swimming, running, and performing power yoga in a New York gym class. A brisk jaunt through the history of working out in Western civilization. At once a book about exercise history, and a travelogue, a literary discovery tour, and another of Hayes’s personal and exhilarating memoirs. Obsessed by both working out and its history, Hayes writes a book that combines them...An entertaining hodgepodge of autobiography, travelogue, and history. With an introspective eye and dynamic prose, Hayes keeps his investigation grounded in his personal search for meaning. If you want to see peek at the other side of the locker room, check out Sweat... Hayes takes readers back centuries to see how our physical health has become what it is, and why we've perceived it as both pain and pleasure through time. It's a personal and historical look, literally sweatin' to the oldies. Part history, part travelogue, part memoir, Sweat tackles the rich topic of exercise (distinct from sports), from Hippocrates to Jane Fonda. Bill Hayes has an unusual set of skills . . . He is part science writer, part memoirist, part culture explainer. 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. Playful and powerful . . .profoundly moving . . . Hayes writes with so much panache that reading this book is thrilling. [A] beguiling brew of fascinating scientific facts and illuminating, poignant anecdotes . . . vital and pulsing with energy. 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. [Insomniac City] seems written in heightened states of feeling that infuse every detail with meaning and transient beauty. “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. No lack of tenderness in Insomniac City, Bill Hayes's memoir of his life in New York with the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks. 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. 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. A unique and exuberant celebration of life and love. 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. 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. 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. Insomniac City is resoundingly about life--about being wide awake to possibility, to the beauty of every fleeting moment. All laud and honor to Hayes. Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, pursues sleep as avidly and lyrically as Nabokov pursued butterflies. Expand reviews