In 1970, Jon Alexander, a history professor at Temple University, complained to the editor of Muscular Development, a leading muscle magazine published by the York Barbell Company, that while the Philadelphia Free Library contained over fi ve million volumes, it had only a few books on weightlifting and virtually nothing on the history of bodybuilding. He wanted to know whether any study had ever traced the history of the sport from its inception to the present. Bob Hoff man, the company's

more »

... er and the iron game's most formidable personality at the time, suggested his own Secrets of Strength and Development; though this rambling text was hardly a history, its author recommended the book as the "nearest thing" to the sort of study that Alexander had requested. 1 Nearly a decade later Barbells + Beefcake, David Webster's illustrated history of bodybuilding, fi lled the immense void on the subject and would no doubt have satisfi ed Alexander. 2 But no extensive studies delving into the historical or sociological roots of this unique activity appeared until the 1990s, when at least a half-dozen funda-preface x