The Golden Era of Bodybuilding (2013?)
By Ric Drasin
277 pp. (Memoir)
Available at RicDrasin.com

Ric Drasin has a fascinating story to tell.  As part of the Venice Beach physique scene during the 1960s and 70s, Drasin knew and worked out with all of the era's great bodybuilders.  He was featured in countless magazines, ads and television shows.  He even designed the Gold's Gym logo.  And all that's putting aside his pro wrestling achievements, and his outstanding current work on the "Ric's Corner" YouTube interview and commentary series.  I have nothing but respect for the man.

Which is why The Golden Era of Bodybuilding is such a complete disappointment.  Even apart from the constant typos, the book is hurried, rambling, and confused, as though dictated and published with no further thought.  

Killer Body (2005)
by Tom Dolan
451 pp. (Fiction)

Given the general dearth of bodybuilding fiction, I began reading Killer Body with high hopes.  The hefty book is actually a collection of three distinct works: two novels and a collection of short stories, all about bodybuilders.  There's definitely a common style: author Tom Dolan is committed to describing every character's lats as "blocking out the sun," and all of his lead characters are essentially the same decent, laid-back guy.  But on a narrative level, the novels and stories all stand alone.

The Last Drug-Free Bodybuilder (2011)
By Bob Gallucci
186 pp. (Memoir)
(Available at Lulu.com)

It’s a bit like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, 1978, 1993, etc.), the sci-fi classic in which alien “pod people” slowly and surreptitiously replace their victims until there are no normal humans left.  Bob Gallucci started bodybuilding as a high-school sophomore in the mid-1960s; within a few years, he had progressed rapidly to winning local and regional competitions, and even the 1969 AAU Teen Mr. America title.  But as the 1970s dawned,  Bob began noticing that other competitors—just a few at first, but then more and more—were growing faster, and getting bigger, between each contest than would seem possible.  

And Bob had to decide whether to join them.

Bench Press (1988/rev. 2003)
By Sven Lindqvist
Translated by Sarah Death
122 pp. (Memoir)

Here's the question: how much pretentious nonsense are you willing to wade through?  Because Bench Press contains some interesting philosophical discussions about bodybuilding—but they're buried in mounds of excruciatingly smug ramblings.

Bench Press is a series of 85 brief numbered passages, ranging from a few sentences to a few pages in length, inspired by author Sven Lindqvist's decision in middle age to begin working out.   As Lindqvist trains, he finds that improving his body also expands his imagination and, most significantly, reawakens his long-dead dream to visit the Sahara desert.  Bench Press bounces back and forth between bodybuilding philosophy, weight-training history, and personal imaginings to explore this transformation.

Beyond Raising the Bar: Excerpts from a Life in Bodybuilding (2013)
By David Pulcinella
290 pp. (Memoirs)
(Available at Amazon.com)

Dear Mr. Pulcinella -

Like so many others, I've been following you since you starred in your brother's three Raising the Bar documentaries, about your efforts to graduate from being a top NPC athlete to being an IFBB professional.  And let's be honest: your brother is definitely a talented filmmaker, but what really made those films work was your honesty and charisma.  I felt like I could listen to your stories for hours.

And now that you've written and published Beyond Raising the Bar, I can.  But as much as I enjoyed your book, should you ever choose to write another, please allow me to offer some unsolicited advice:

Please, please hire an editor.

Thomas Topham (1702–1749) and Joe Call (1781–1835) are two legendary strongmen, with the emphasis on "legendary": in the centuries between their deaths and the present day, true facts about their lives have become hard to discern from folklore.  Accordingly, a modern scholar must choose how to proceed when discussing these men. 

Heart & Steel: The Strongman Steve Schmidt Story (2012)
by Brenda Black
141 pp. (Biography)
steveschmidtmo.com

Steve Schmidt is an an impressive strongman.  He holds several United States All-Round Weightlifting Association (USAWA) records, including a 2,520-pound hip lift and 7,253 back lifts of 1,115 pounds each (for a total of over 8 million pounds) in under three hours.  He's in the Guinness Book of World Records for lifting a 100kg (220-pound) weight fifty times in a minute—using only his teeth.  He routinely puts on strongman shows at fairs and festivals, where he bends horseshoes, steel bars and rebar, and donates the proceeds to charity.  (He also bends steel bars across the bridge of his nose without any padding, which . . . wow.) 

As a tribute to Schmidt, Heart & Steel shines.  The book covers Schmidt's strongman feats in admiring detail, as well as providing some insight into his childhood, work ethic, faith and family life.  Apart from being devoted to his wife, Schmidt appears to be a fundamentally independent soul: he avoids doctors, is deeply religious but seems mildly distrustful of formal worship, and seems to be generally self-sufficient on his Missouri farm.   He is a believer in both hard work and fair play; early in his lifting career, he traveled to prisons to compete against the inmates, even though "I had to go through seven doors and competed with some pretty scary guys," because "[t]hose were fair competitions … they couldn't get the drugs" (steroids).  Years later, he agreed to attend a competition (and potentially set some new records) only if it happened to rain on the day of the event, because otherwise he had work to do on his farm.  In sum, Schmidt comes across as genuinely decent, humble, and highly focused.

Champion by Choice (2008)
by Richard "Lucky" Luckman
149 pp. (Autobiography)
(Available at Amazon.com)

Champion by Choice is the autobiography of Richard Luckman, who became a powerlifting phenom in the early 1970s while in prison for armed robbery.  The story is full of potential; my problem was that the powerlifting-focused book I wanted to read is very different from the general life history that Luckman wanted to tell.

The book starts briskly enough, with a short but frank history of Luckman's troubled young-adulthood, which landed him in jail.  And Luckman does a great job of explaining how, once incarcerated, he found focus and self-worth through a growing interest in powerlifting.  Luckman's straightforward, blunt descriptions of his competitions lack suspense, but that's OK: we still get a solid sense of the difficulties and rewards of being a world-class athlete while in prison.

But by the mid-1970s — or almost exactly 50% of the way through Champion by Choice — Luckman largely lost interest in competitive lifting.  And his autobiography loses focus as a result: the entire second half meanders through Luckman's romantic interests and work history through the decades after he left prison.  Some of this is amusing, but the constant string of "and then I went here, and then there, and then here . . ." becomes numbing.