The Body Shop: Parties, Pills, and Pumping Iron -- Or, My Life in the Age of Muscle
When he was a kid, Solotaroff was, by his own admission, not much to look at. In the mid-1970s, the unprepossessing college kid stumbled into, of all things, weight lifting. This was just before bodybuilding superstars like Schwarzenegger and Ferrigno catapulted weight training into pop-culture status. This was also, as Solotaroff makes abundantly clear, before your average Joe had any real idea of the destructive power of steroids. Journalist Solotaroff could have made this memoir another romp through the sex-and-drugs culture of the seventies. Instead, he tells a thoughtful story about a young man finding his own identity, set against the backdrop of that same sex-and-drugs culture. Solotaroff is quite a talented writer, and the book is as compelling as any coming-of-age novel. Fans of bodybuilding will enjoy it for the look at the early days of the sport, but the book should be highly recommended to anyone who enjoys the kind of introspective autobiography that reveals something about the author’s inner life. --David Pitt