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Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle
The story―and the science―of nature's greatest engine. Whether we blink an eye, lift a finger, throw a spear or a ball, walk, run, or merely breathe, we are using muscle. Although muscles differ little in appearance and performance across the animal kingdom, they accomplish tasks as diverse as making flies fly, rattlesnakes rattle, and squid shoot their tentacles.
Our everyday activities turn on the performance of nature's main engine: we may breathe harder going uphill, but we put more strain on our muscles walking downhill. Those of us who are right-handed can tighten screws and jar lids more forcibly than we can loosen them. Here we're treated to the story of how form and performance make these things happen―how nature does her work.
Steven Vogel is a leader in the great new field of bioengineering, which is rapidly explaining the beauty and efficiency of nature. His talents as both scientist and writer shine in this masterful narrative of biological ingenuity, as he relates the story―and science―of nature's greatest engine.
Our everyday activities turn on the performance of nature's main engine: we may breathe harder going uphill, but we put more strain on our muscles walking downhill. Those of us who are right-handed can tighten screws and jar lids more forcibly than we can loosen them. Here we're treated to the story of how form and performance make these things happen―how nature does her work.
Steven Vogel is a leader in the great new field of bioengineering, which is rapidly explaining the beauty and efficiency of nature. His talents as both scientist and writer shine in this masterful narrative of biological ingenuity, as he relates the story―and science―of nature's greatest engine.
390 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
33 people are currently reading
118 people want to read
About the author
Steven Vogel
25 books16 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Steven Vogel is James B. Duke Professor, Emeritus, in the Department of Biology at Duke University.
As it has turned out, my activities as a teacher and writer have extended well beyond the explication of the immediate results of research. The first two of my seven books, A Functional Bestiary: Laboratory Studies about Living Systems and A Model Menagerie: Laboratory Studies about Living Systems, provide eclectic material for teaching laboratories in introductory biology. The third, Life in Moving Fluids, finds most use as an entry point into fluid mechanics; it is now in its second (much enlarged) edition. The fourth, Life's Devices, takes comparative biomechanics as a paradigm for thinking about science, using the very mundanity of the subject to draw in non-scientists rather than presenting them with some system of revelation. The book was generated through a course given to adults in a non-specialist master's program and is now in use in a variety of undergraduate courses; it was selected by a science-oriented book club and has won a substantial award. Material in that book reappears in expanded and more sophisticated form in my recent undergraduate textbook, Comparative Biomechanics. The fifth, Vital Circuits, is of a deliberately less pedagogical character; it's about circulatory systems, whose disabilities are of widespread interest. But it uses them as a vehicle to talk in biological rather than pathological terms and to illustrate how a such a subject is viewed by a biological scientist in contrast to a journalist or a physician. Cats' Paws and Catapults, also aimed at the general reader, compares the mechanical technologies of nature with that of humans. Prime Mover, another trade book, tries to link the biomechanics and physiology of muscle to the role it has played in human activities. Finally, I've written for more popular publications, such as Natural History and Discover, attempting to create pieces that explain science rather than merely reporting on the current activities of scientists, and I've become involved with several science museums, again in activities aimed at explaining science as part of contemporary culture. Two additional books, both aimed at a general scientific readership, are currently in gestation.
Steven Vogel is James B. Duke Professor, Emeritus, in the Department of Biology at Duke University.
As it has turned out, my activities as a teacher and writer have extended well beyond the explication of the immediate results of research. The first two of my seven books, A Functional Bestiary: Laboratory Studies about Living Systems and A Model Menagerie: Laboratory Studies about Living Systems, provide eclectic material for teaching laboratories in introductory biology. The third, Life in Moving Fluids, finds most use as an entry point into fluid mechanics; it is now in its second (much enlarged) edition. The fourth, Life's Devices, takes comparative biomechanics as a paradigm for thinking about science, using the very mundanity of the subject to draw in non-scientists rather than presenting them with some system of revelation. The book was generated through a course given to adults in a non-specialist master's program and is now in use in a variety of undergraduate courses; it was selected by a science-oriented book club and has won a substantial award. Material in that book reappears in expanded and more sophisticated form in my recent undergraduate textbook, Comparative Biomechanics. The fifth, Vital Circuits, is of a deliberately less pedagogical character; it's about circulatory systems, whose disabilities are of widespread interest. But it uses them as a vehicle to talk in biological rather than pathological terms and to illustrate how a such a subject is viewed by a biological scientist in contrast to a journalist or a physician. Cats' Paws and Catapults, also aimed at the general reader, compares the mechanical technologies of nature with that of humans. Prime Mover, another trade book, tries to link the biomechanics and physiology of muscle to the role it has played in human activities. Finally, I've written for more popular publications, such as Natural History and Discover, attempting to create pieces that explain science rather than merely reporting on the current activities of scientists, and I've become involved with several science museums, again in activities aimed at explaining science as part of contemporary culture. Two additional books, both aimed at a general scientific readership, are currently in gestation.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 17, 2024
Meat is muscle and muscle is meat. The best muscle for studying in the best meat for eating!
Red meat is slow-twitch muscle optimised for power and endurance. The red colour comes from myoglobin, which stores oxygen and helps it diffuse through the tissues. White meat is optimised for speed and force.
Muscle cells are among the largest in the body, stretching from one end of the muscle to the other. Muscle cells have many nuclei in a single cell membrane.
Red meat is slow-twitch muscle optimised for power and endurance. The red colour comes from myoglobin, which stores oxygen and helps it diffuse through the tissues. White meat is optimised for speed and force.
Muscle cells are among the largest in the body, stretching from one end of the muscle to the other. Muscle cells have many nuclei in a single cell membrane.
November 30, 2021
Author gets very distracted with entire chapters of low pertinence
May 17, 2019
I really enjoy Steven Vogel's books, but this one seemed to be missing the unity of overall themes and common underlying mechanisms that I have found in his other books. Having delved into this topic a little more since then, I strongly suspect it is because scientists really don't understand muscle very well. Much more to learn before we can take on this topic in an elegant way.
July 3, 2020
Some amazing biomechanical insights and explanations caught between tedious tangents into the history of agriculture, warfare, and other digressions. In my opinion, this could have been 1/3 shorter without losing much depth. Pick and choose the chapters most interesting; no need to read the whole thing.
April 10, 2025
As a student, my class had to read this book for an Anatomy and Physiology course, and it was one of the most unenjoyable and unnecessarily difficult books we studied.
October 18, 2016
_Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle_ by Steven Vogel is an ambitious work of both natural and human history. The author in this book showed how muscle worked (in general, not just in humans), how humans have used it, and how muscle and muscle-dependent (human and animal) activities, tools, and weapons have shaped world history, culture, and technology.
Understandably, the first section of the book detailed the structure and function of muscle, including how it is constructed down to the molecular level, how it is made to do work, how it is supplied with energy, how it was connected to the rest of the body, and the different types of muscles that exist. Comprising the first six of the book's fifteen chapters, it was an important part, covering not only a lot of biology but also a good deal of physics (indeed physics was quite important in later discussions of how muscle and muscle-dependent technology worked and affected human history).
The first section was very interesting and informative much of the time, covering for instance the differences between twitch muscle fibers and tonic muscle fibers (the former, lighter in color, are great for quick, sharp actions but fatigue easily, the latter darker, contracting more slowly, but able to resist fatigue a great deal better) and how the propriocoptive system works (one of the senses - not unlike seeing or hearing - that encompassed reflexes and quicker-than-thought reactions to such things as hot surfaces and is made up of muscles, tendons, and nerves). As with the rest of the book, this section was well illustrated. Vogel did a pretty good job overall in his coverage of the biology of muscle, keeping it for the most part comprehendible and engaging to the lay person, though I thought it got just a little too detailed and technical for me at times (and one or two parts of it frankly were quite hard to get through).
Most of the rest of the book dealt with a wide variety of tools, weapons, and activities, covering their history, why and how these items and activities developed, what muscles (human or animal as the case may be) were used as well as how they were used, and why they were (as occurred in most cases) eventually replaced with items not as dependent on muscular activity. This to me was the most interesting part of the book, with Vogel providing fascinating insights and perspectives on such items as screw drivers, hammers, axes (fascinating coverage of this topic, as the author discussed among other things how stone axes were used and the how the centers of percussion and gravity and thus the effectiveness of axes were altered by where an ax handle and ax head met, how they were attached, and the materials used in both head and ax), cranks, paddled and rowed ships (the reader learns the advantages and disadvantages of both and why ships that could be both sailed and rowed - as were Viking ships and the galley ships in the Mediterranean- faced unique problems; sailing ships must be ballasted to sail crosswind and that extra weight can complicate rowing and in addition sailing other than downwind generally made ships heel over, something avoided by ships having high sides, a solution that made oar placement problematic), bicycles, human-powered aircraft (a wonderful section), wheelbarrows (I think the reader will find we take for granted their simple but highly effective design), backpacks, monument construction (notably with regards to the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge), cutting down trees (the history of the crosscut saw was surprisingly interesting), plows, treadmills, (which were once used in prisons as a means of punishment), chariots, wagons, boomerangs, atlatls, slings, blowguns, crossbows, and trebuchets (the last several items requiring a fair amount of physics).
In addition to an in depth and interesting discussion of the evolution of animal-powered tools and vehicles, Vogel covered at length why certain animals were domesticated and their relative advantages and disadvantages. The historical rivalry between those who favored horses and those who favored oxen merited its own interesting chapter. Overall the coverage of these animals and others dovetailed nicely with discussion on the domestication of animals in Jared Diamond's excellent _Guns, Germs, and Steel_.
The final section dealt with muscle as food, covering what role muscle as food has played in human evolution and in recorded history and what are the advantages and disadvantages of diets rich in muscle and muscle-free. There was even a small section covering human cannibalism, with the author demonstrating that while survival cannibalism and ritual cannibalism certainly existed, it is just not possible for routine nutritional cannibalism to have been at the very least effective and generally even possible at all.
Overall _Prime Mover_ was an interesting book and one that I am glad that I read, good as both a work of human history and natural history.
Understandably, the first section of the book detailed the structure and function of muscle, including how it is constructed down to the molecular level, how it is made to do work, how it is supplied with energy, how it was connected to the rest of the body, and the different types of muscles that exist. Comprising the first six of the book's fifteen chapters, it was an important part, covering not only a lot of biology but also a good deal of physics (indeed physics was quite important in later discussions of how muscle and muscle-dependent technology worked and affected human history).
The first section was very interesting and informative much of the time, covering for instance the differences between twitch muscle fibers and tonic muscle fibers (the former, lighter in color, are great for quick, sharp actions but fatigue easily, the latter darker, contracting more slowly, but able to resist fatigue a great deal better) and how the propriocoptive system works (one of the senses - not unlike seeing or hearing - that encompassed reflexes and quicker-than-thought reactions to such things as hot surfaces and is made up of muscles, tendons, and nerves). As with the rest of the book, this section was well illustrated. Vogel did a pretty good job overall in his coverage of the biology of muscle, keeping it for the most part comprehendible and engaging to the lay person, though I thought it got just a little too detailed and technical for me at times (and one or two parts of it frankly were quite hard to get through).
Most of the rest of the book dealt with a wide variety of tools, weapons, and activities, covering their history, why and how these items and activities developed, what muscles (human or animal as the case may be) were used as well as how they were used, and why they were (as occurred in most cases) eventually replaced with items not as dependent on muscular activity. This to me was the most interesting part of the book, with Vogel providing fascinating insights and perspectives on such items as screw drivers, hammers, axes (fascinating coverage of this topic, as the author discussed among other things how stone axes were used and the how the centers of percussion and gravity and thus the effectiveness of axes were altered by where an ax handle and ax head met, how they were attached, and the materials used in both head and ax), cranks, paddled and rowed ships (the reader learns the advantages and disadvantages of both and why ships that could be both sailed and rowed - as were Viking ships and the galley ships in the Mediterranean- faced unique problems; sailing ships must be ballasted to sail crosswind and that extra weight can complicate rowing and in addition sailing other than downwind generally made ships heel over, something avoided by ships having high sides, a solution that made oar placement problematic), bicycles, human-powered aircraft (a wonderful section), wheelbarrows (I think the reader will find we take for granted their simple but highly effective design), backpacks, monument construction (notably with regards to the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge), cutting down trees (the history of the crosscut saw was surprisingly interesting), plows, treadmills, (which were once used in prisons as a means of punishment), chariots, wagons, boomerangs, atlatls, slings, blowguns, crossbows, and trebuchets (the last several items requiring a fair amount of physics).
In addition to an in depth and interesting discussion of the evolution of animal-powered tools and vehicles, Vogel covered at length why certain animals were domesticated and their relative advantages and disadvantages. The historical rivalry between those who favored horses and those who favored oxen merited its own interesting chapter. Overall the coverage of these animals and others dovetailed nicely with discussion on the domestication of animals in Jared Diamond's excellent _Guns, Germs, and Steel_.
The final section dealt with muscle as food, covering what role muscle as food has played in human evolution and in recorded history and what are the advantages and disadvantages of diets rich in muscle and muscle-free. There was even a small section covering human cannibalism, with the author demonstrating that while survival cannibalism and ritual cannibalism certainly existed, it is just not possible for routine nutritional cannibalism to have been at the very least effective and generally even possible at all.
Overall _Prime Mover_ was an interesting book and one that I am glad that I read, good as both a work of human history and natural history.
October 4, 2009
I really enjoyed the first few chapters of this book which present a great overview of muscle. The second part of the book diverged into talking about labor, weapons, and other topics that were not as interesting to me.
April 22, 2015
Had many of the aspects of muscle that I was interested in - but I think it mainly whetted my interest for the subject. Still wishing for a D'arcy Wentworth Thompson who will illuminate musculature in full - the true Victorian style of comprehensiveness beyond comprehension.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews