Charming and idiosyncratic... a distinctive, often moving blend of historical and memoirist writing.” —The New Yorker
“An enthusiasm it's impossible not to share...Erudite, ludic, eccentric, energetic and historically transporting, it's like falling through a gym and landing in a joust.” —The Guardian
“At its best, Hayes' book reframes exercise as a deep series of questions thinkers and scientists have been contemplating for thousands of years. . . . it's a thrill to see them gathered in one place.” —GQ.com
“I was riveted by Sweat and its extraordinary tale of the ups and downs of exercise over millennia. Who knew?” —Jane Fonda
“If there is one person in the modern world who can reinvigorate Mercuriale's enormous unfinished labor and bridge the physical, the philosophical, and the poetic - bridge Whitman and Warhol, Plato and Peloton, Kafka and Curie, Tennessee Williams and Serena Williams; bridge the 'immediate bodily now' of exercise with 'the wisdom of the past that had faded from living memory' - it is Bill Hayes. And so he does, in Sweat.” —Maria Popova, The Marginalian
“Bill Hayes' peripatetic inquiry into the history of exercise is a delight for anyone who loves a good search for a missing manuscript, as well as anyone who loves being 'so drenched in sweat as to feel amphibious.' And if those predilections happen to overlap for you, hang onto your Bosu ball-you're in for a treat. Hayes weaves his riveting findings in the archives with a revelatory memoir of physical exertion that begins to answer that most human of questions: what does the body mean?” —Alison Bechdel
“At its heart, [Sweat] is a deeply personal book about the universal subject of humans attempting to grapple with the meaning of their own physicality. . . . an erudite memoir of a lifelong fitness enthusiast who is looking to place his own forays into weightlifting, swimming, boxing, and yoga in the context of a historical tradition that spans from Hippocrates to Jane Fonda.” —Outside
“Perhaps because exercise is such a universal-and universally humbling-part of our lives, Sweat does, seemingly effortlessly, what all good history books should do: take the past and make it vastly more human.” —The Times
“An appealing, essential addition to the shelf. . . Hayes brings his resilient good nature and charming candor to the page. . . Whether in a library, a gym or the Grecian ruins of an ancient locker room, Hayes captures the majesty of bodies in motion.” —Shelf Awareness, starred review
“Hayes blends science, travel, history, and memoir into a thoroughly engaging, and idiosyncratic, narrative inquiry into 'exercise'... Hayes writes with panache as he crosses three continents in search of fitness routines past and present, from fencing to Jane Fonda.” —National Book Review
“Hayes entertainingly describes his adventures in the world of fitness, learning how to box at a pugilists' boot camp, swimming, running, and performing power yoga in a New York gym class. A brisk jaunt through the history of working out in Western civilization.” —Booklist
“At once a book about exercise history, and a travelogue, a literary discovery tour, and another of Hayes's personal and exhilarating memoirs.” —Library Journal
“Obsessed by both working out and its history, Hayes writes a book that combines them...An entertaining hodgepodge of autobiography, travelogue, and history.” —Kirkus Reviews
“With an introspective eye and dynamic prose, Hayes keeps his investigation grounded in his personal search for meaning.” —Publishers Weekly
“If you want to see peek at the other side of the locker room, check out Sweat... Hayes takes readers back centuries to see how our physical health has become what it is, and why we've perceived it as both pain and pleasure through time. It's a personal and historical look, literally sweatin' to the oldies.” —Bookworm Sez
“Part history, part travelogue, part memoir, Sweat tackles the rich topic of exercise (distinct from sports), from Hippocrates to Jane Fonda.” —Lit Hub
“Bill Hayes has an unusual set of skills . . . He is part science writer, part memoirist, part culture explainer.” —The New York Times
“Read just 50 pages, and you'll see easily enough how Hayes is [Oliver] Sacks's logical complement. Though possessed of different temperaments, both are alive to difference, variety, the possibilities of our rangy humanity; both are avid chroniclers of our species . . . Frank, beautiful, bewitching.” —Jennifer Senior, the New York Times on INSOMNIAC CITY
“Playful and powerful . . .profoundly moving . . . Hayes writes with so much panache that reading this book is thrilling.” —The Boston Globe on FIVE QUARTS
“[A] beguiling brew of fascinating scientific facts and illuminating, poignant anecdotes . . . vital and pulsing with energy.” —Entertainment Weekly on FIVE QUARTS
“This touching memoir of the late neurologist Oliver Sacks, by a photographer and writer with whom he fell in love near the end of his life, turns a story of death into a celebration.” —The New Yorker on INSOMNIAC CITY
“[Insomniac City] seems written in heightened states of feeling that infuse every detail with meaning and transient beauty.” —Shelf Awareness Best Adult Books of 2017 - Nonfiction
““Insomniac City is a beautiful memoir in which Oliver Sacks comes wonderfully to life—a double portrait that also provides a vivid picture of New York City's neighborhoods and people. The ending is exquisitely wrought, heartrending and joyous.” —Joyce Carol Oates on INSOMNIAC CITY
“No lack of tenderness in Insomniac City, Bill Hayes's memoir of his life in New York with the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks.” —The Guardian on INSOMNIAC CITY
“As eloquent in its silences and visuals as it is in its telling of the secrets of the heart . . . The brilliance of Insomniac City is that almost Tolstoy-an directness and concretion of observation, both down-to-earth and downright visionary.” —Bay Area Reporter on INSOMNIAC CITY
“Remarkably poignant. Readers will find themselves wishing the two men had more time, but as Hayes makes clear, they wasted none of the time they had.” —Publishers Weekly on INSOMNIAC CITY
“A unique and exuberant celebration of life and love.” —Kirkus on INSOMNIAC CITY
“Buy a box of tissues and pray for snow: This is the perfect weekend February read, and will have you alternately bawling and giddily clapping your hands for the lovers that may not have had the time they deserved, but certainly made the best with the time that they had.” —Newsweek, "The Best New Book Releases" for INSOMNIAC CITY
“Like Patti Smith's haunting M Train, Hayes' book weaves seemingly disparate threads of memory into a kind of sanctuary—a secret place where one can shake off the treasured relics of past lives and prepare to be reborn anew.” —San Francisco Chronicle on INSOMNIAC CITY
“Hayes captures both the frenetic, exhilarating pace of New York City as well as the whimsy, fun and romance of the years he spent with Sacks.” —New York Post on INSOMNIAC CITY
“Insomniac City is resoundingly about life—about being wide awake to possibility, to the beauty of every fleeting moment.” —Oprah.com on INSOMNIAC CITY
“All laud and honor to Hayes.” —The Washington Post on THE ANATOMIST
“Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, pursues sleep as avidly and lyrically as Nabokov pursued butterflies.” —San Francisco Chronicle on SLEEP DEMONS
10/25/2021
“If I were to trace a line back in time to the beginnings of exercise, where would I land?” asks journalist Hayes in this candid study (after How We Live Now). Inspired by a trip to the library in which he found accounts of writers explaining their fitness routines, Hayes surveys “descriptions of exercises going back to the fifth century B.C.” He finds a kindred spirit in Renaissance physician Girolamo Mercuriale, who, in a time when “cathedrals replaced gymnasiums as sacred sites” was fascinated by the reverence the ancient Greeks and Romans held for the human body, viewing it not just as a means for movement but as its own form of art. Hayes follows in his footsteps, collecting musings from Plato (who suggested that women should exercise “together with the men”), Greek physician Galen (who critiqued fitness trainers for masquerading as medical experts), Franz Kafka (who wrestled with his neighbor every night), and Jane Fonda. With an introspective eye and dynamic prose, Hayes keeps his investigation grounded in his personal search for meaning: “Libraries, like gyms, have always been a refuge for me.” It’s a great—if niche—introduction to an action-packed part of history. Agent: Emily Forland, Brandt & Hochman Literary. (Jan.)
12/01/2021
After writing books about the science of sleep, the history of human blood, and the story behind Gray's Anatomy—as well as a warm and poignant memoir of his late partner, Oliver Sacks—Hayes's latest work is about the experience of exercise. He describes starting his research at a local library, only to find that the older books he was interested in were no longer around. This led Hayes to the New York Academy of Medicine Historical Collections library, where he was introduced to what he calls a magical book from the Renaissance, De Arte Gymnastica by Girolamo Mercuriale (1573). Hayes followed Mercuriale's lead to libraries and archives in England and France and even on a trip to Greece to visit the sites of the first Olympic games. Hayes went on to explore great writers' texts about exercise, including musings by Greek poet Hesiod and Bohemian novelist Franz Kafka. Hayes's book brings the narrative up to the 20th century with an exploration of modern exercise gurus like Jack LaLanne and Jane Fonda. VERDICT At once a book about exercise history, and a travelogue, a literary discovery tour, and another of Hayes's personal and exhilarating memoirs.—Marcia G. Welsh, formerly at Dartmouth Coll. Lib., Hanover, NH
2021-10-20
Obsessed by both working out and its history, Hayes writes a book that combines them.
A successful freelance author, journalist, photographer, and editor, the author is not shy about describing his lifetime preoccupation with running, gym workouts, and aerobics, with diversions into boxing, swimming, and biking. After recording exercises favored by such towering historical figures as Einstein (“didn’t look like a strapping athlete, but he didn’t look like he never exercised either”), Tolstoy, and Kafka, Hayes delves more deeply into the subject. He hit the jackpot in the rare book room of the New York Academy of Medicine, discovering a huge, brilliantly illustrated edition of “De arte gymnastica(The Art of Gymnastics), dated 1573. The author was Girolamo Mercuriale, a name previously unknown to me.” As Hayes learned, the book was an effort to revive Greek and Roman love of exercise. Reappearing throughout this book, De arteprovides much of the inspiration for Hayes’ exploration. “In ancient Greece and in the early Roman Empire,” he writes, “there was at least one gymnasium in every town. The gymnasium was as much a part of culture and society as a theater and marketplace.” Authorities from Hippocrates to Plato extolled exercise, a point of view snuffed out by the rise of Christianity, when “Cathedrals replaced gymnasiums as sacred sites; it was the holy spirit—the soul—that was now to be glorified, not the body.” By the 16th century, Renaissance humanism was reviving the former view. This book is largely a record of the author’s travels across the world, where he visited libraries and interviewed scholars and scientists or simply people he encountered along the way. He recounts exercise history and how he continued his daily workouts despite often primitive local facilities, and he interjects episodes from his past that are more or less related to the active life. Fittingly, he ends at the Olympia site in Greece.
An entertaining hodgepodge of autobiography, travelogue, and history.
