"Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a leading scholar and proselytizer for physical well-being, elucidates the political and social implications of America's exercise cult(ure). Delving into the paradox of why so many Americans are physically unfit, despite the power of the exercise industry, Petrzela shows fitness to be both a product and a marker of education, social class, wealth, power, and more. Like much in postwar American life, fitness has been privatized,...

"You've been lifting for a few years. When you take your shirt off, do you look like a professional athlete? Do you even look like you work out? Many fitness "experts" defend weights and cardio like they are infallible, but where are the results? Why does almost nobody look even marginally athletic? Fitness may be the most failed human endeavor, and you are about to see how exercise science has missed some obvious principles that when enacted will...