What are big muscles for? They were sidelined long ago by the Industrial Revolution; engines drive plows and hammer steel more cheaply and less complainingly. Somehow, though, they retain an ambiguous ...

Author Michael Brodeur takes the gym too seriously, and not seriously at all at the same time, in his book “Swole: The Making of Men and the Meaning of Muscles” in an effort to show the readers that ...

When Michael Andor Brodeur was working at the Boston Globe in 2010, he was in a serious bicycle accident that required a lot of gym time to rehab. “I got back to normal and then decided that there was ...

SWOLE: The Making of Men and the Meaning of Muscle. By Michael Brodeur. Beacon Press. 256 pages. $28.95. Author Michael Brodeur takes the gym too seriously, and not seriously at all at the same time, ...