Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding

This highly engaging landmark work, a natural history of exercise—by the author of the best seller The Story of the Human Body—seeks to answer a fundamental question: were you born to run or rest?

The first three parts of Exercised roughly follow the evolutionary story of human physical activity and inactivity, even as each chapter shatters a particular myth about exercise. Because we cannot understand physical activity without understanding its absence, Part One begins with physical inactiv...