Muscle

As a boy, Samuel Fussell was short, skinny and shy. Adolescence brought an outward transformation - he shot up to 6ft 4in - and he developed intellectually, too. He graduated from Oxford University and joined a New York publishing house, but inside his impressive new frame cowered the 98-pound weakling of his boyhood; the world outside was as threatening and terrifying as before. The armour he chose to protect himself was painfully forged from flesh and muscle over four years of severe diets, exercises and steroids, in the raucous bodybuilding gyms of New York and California. This is his account of the world of dreamers which Fussell entered when he gave up his job and became a bodybuilding addict. It reveals the needs and fantasies of a variety of characters who include colourful rogues and gym rats.