The Body Shop

Parties, Pills, and Pumping Iron -- Or, My Life in the Age of Muscle

Contributors

By Paul Solotaroff

Formats and Prices

Price

$37.00

Price

$47.00 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. Hardcover $37.00 $47.00 CAD
  2. ebook $13.99 $17.99 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around July 26, 2010. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

In a matter of months, he grew from a dorky beanpole into a hulking behemoth, showing off his rock hard muscles first on the streets of New York City and then alongside his colorful gym-rat friends in strip clubs and in the homes of the gotham elite. It was a swinging time, when “Would you like to dance?” turned into “Your place or mine?” and the guys with the muscles had all the ladies — until their bodies, like Solotaroff”s, completely shut down.

But this isn’t the gloom-and-doom addiction one might expect — Solotaroff looks back at even his lowest points with a wicked sense of humor, and he sends up the disco era and its excess with all the kaleidoscopic detail of Boogie Nights or Saturday Night Fever.

Written with candor and sarcasm, The Body Shop is a memoir with all the elements of great fiction and dazzlingly displays Paul Solotaroff’s celebrated writing talent.

Genre:

  • "Delivered in a suitably amped prose style, the story casts light on the early days of bodybuilding and gym culture, before New York Sports Clubs existed in every neighborhood"
    Steven Kurutz, Wall Street Journal
  • "It's fantastic."
    Dan Fogarty, Sportsgrid.com
  • "Solotaroff is a respected journalist who writes for Men's Journal and Rolling Stone... But in the mid-1970s, he was a college student who got into weight lifting and steroids, and followed his obsession into a life as a male stripper and a drug addict who attended orgies in the wild world of New York in the disco era. The Body Shop is a cautionary tale that's also an entertaining time-trip into the recent past."
    Jeff Baker, The Oregonian
  • "as Solotaroff explains in The Body Shop, his smart and funny book that chronicles his own summer of steroids, using drugs often comes with a terrible physical and emotional price."
    Michael O?Keeffe, New York Daily News
  • "I can't tell you in strong enough terms how terrific Paul Solotaroff's new book, The Body Shop, is. We spend a lot of time wringing our hands about steroids, and not nearly enough discussing the powerful lures and temptations of building perfect bodies. Take a tour through this eloquent memoir and it will make a lot more sense."
    Mike Vaccaro, The New York Post
  • "[A] very well-written and surprisingly tender book.... Whatever the depth and duration of [Solotaroff's] crises of confidence, though, this book shows that he was always a writer at heart."
    Megan Buskey, New York Times Book Review

On Sale
Jul 26, 2010
Page Count
304 pages
ISBN-13
9780316011013

Paul Solotaroff

About the Author

Paul Solotaroff is a contributing editor at Men’s Journal and Rolling Stone. He has written features for Vanity Fair, GQ, Vogue, and the New York Times Magazine, and he was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2004. His work has been included in Best American Sports Writing. The author of two books, Group and The House of Purple Hearts, he lives in New York City.

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