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Sweat: A History of Exercise
A New Yorker Best Book of the year
An Esquire Best Nonfiction Book of 2022
From Insomniac City author Bill Hayes, "who can tackle just about any subject in book form, and make you glad he did" ( SF Chronicle) - a cultural, scientific, literary, and personal history of exercise, now in paperback.
Exercise is our modern obsession, and we have the fancy workout gear and fads from HIIT to spin classes to hot yoga to prove it. Exercise-a form of physical activity distinct from sports, play, or athletics-was an ancient obsession, too, but as a chapter in human history, it's been largely overlooked. In Sweat , Bill Hayes runs, jogs, swims, spins, walks, bikes, boxes, lifts, sweats, and downward-dogs his way through the origins of different forms of exercise, chronicling how they have evolved over time, dissecting the dynamics of human movement.
Hippocrates, Plato, Galen, Susan B. Anthony, Jack LaLanne, and Jane Fonda, among many others, make appearances in Sweat , but chief among the historical figures is Girolamo Mercuriale, a Renaissance-era Italian physician who aimed singlehandedly to revive the ancient Greek “art of exercising” through his 1569 book De arte gymnastica . Though largely forgotten over the past five centuries, Mercuriale and his illustrated treatise were pioneering, and are brought back to life in the pages of Sweat. Hayes ties his own personal experience-and ours-to the cultural and scientific history of exercise, from ancient times to the present day, giving us a new way to understand its place in our lives in the 21st century.
An Esquire Best Nonfiction Book of 2022
From Insomniac City author Bill Hayes, "who can tackle just about any subject in book form, and make you glad he did" ( SF Chronicle) - a cultural, scientific, literary, and personal history of exercise, now in paperback.
Exercise is our modern obsession, and we have the fancy workout gear and fads from HIIT to spin classes to hot yoga to prove it. Exercise-a form of physical activity distinct from sports, play, or athletics-was an ancient obsession, too, but as a chapter in human history, it's been largely overlooked. In Sweat , Bill Hayes runs, jogs, swims, spins, walks, bikes, boxes, lifts, sweats, and downward-dogs his way through the origins of different forms of exercise, chronicling how they have evolved over time, dissecting the dynamics of human movement.
Hippocrates, Plato, Galen, Susan B. Anthony, Jack LaLanne, and Jane Fonda, among many others, make appearances in Sweat , but chief among the historical figures is Girolamo Mercuriale, a Renaissance-era Italian physician who aimed singlehandedly to revive the ancient Greek “art of exercising” through his 1569 book De arte gymnastica . Though largely forgotten over the past five centuries, Mercuriale and his illustrated treatise were pioneering, and are brought back to life in the pages of Sweat. Hayes ties his own personal experience-and ours-to the cultural and scientific history of exercise, from ancient times to the present day, giving us a new way to understand its place in our lives in the 21st century.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 18, 2022
83 people are currently reading
5475 people want to read
About the author
Bill Hayes
31 books431 followersThe recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction, Bill Hayes is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and the author of several books.
A photographer as well as a writer, his photos have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Granta, New York Times, and on CBS Evening News. His portraits of his partner, the late Oliver Sacks, appear in the recent collection of Dr. Sacks’s suite of final essays Gratitude.
Hayes has been a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome, the recipient of a Leon Levy Foundation grant, and a Resident Writer at Blue Mountain Center. He has also served as a guest lecturer at Stanford, NYU, UCSF, University of Virginia, and the New York Academy of Medicine.
A photographer as well as a writer, his photos have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Granta, New York Times, and on CBS Evening News. His portraits of his partner, the late Oliver Sacks, appear in the recent collection of Dr. Sacks’s suite of final essays Gratitude.
Hayes has been a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome, the recipient of a Leon Levy Foundation grant, and a Resident Writer at Blue Mountain Center. He has also served as a guest lecturer at Stanford, NYU, UCSF, University of Virginia, and the New York Academy of Medicine.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews
February 15, 2023
An ultimately unsatisfying book about different types of exercise and the author's feelings about them. I got some interesting nuggets out of it, but as far as exercise books go, I much preferred Let's Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World.
Click here to hear more of my thoughts on this book over on my Booktube channel, abookolive.
Click here to hear more of my thoughts on this book over on my Booktube channel, abookolive.
January 6, 2022
I've always considered exercise for nothing more than the sake of fitness (as opposed to rigorous training for a particular sport), to be a more modern phenomena, one that evolved out of necessity as our lives and occupations became more sedentary, but it turns out we've been "gym rats" a lot longer than I thought.
Hayes takes a look at exercise through the ages, exploring and experimenting with fitness fads, while still managing to visit plenty of libraries in between workouts as he searches for rare books on the subject.
I most enjoyed the chapters about author's personal fitness experiments - jogging naked and taking boxing classes, and his sweet memories about going to gyms with his dad.
Hayes takes a look at exercise through the ages, exploring and experimenting with fitness fads, while still managing to visit plenty of libraries in between workouts as he searches for rare books on the subject.
I most enjoyed the chapters about author's personal fitness experiments - jogging naked and taking boxing classes, and his sweet memories about going to gyms with his dad.
February 13, 2022
This is A history of exercise, not THE history of exercise. It is kind of a memoir of a gay man who sometimes researches, sometimes tries different sports. You won't forget he's gay, because he mentions it every few pages and, in the age of #metoo, I was surprised at his behavior and speech because they would not have been tolerated by a straight man. That said, when he actually reports on ancient exercise, the book can be interesting. But it gets bogged down by Hayes remembering a time he hurt his head swimming in a lake or how many of his lovers were impacted by AIDS in the 80's. The book might have worked if the author had picked one- memoir or history- but as it is it's just okay.
March 4, 2022
Read this book and about twenty pages in you'll find yourself shouting the same refrain over and over--SO WHAT?!?!. Bill Hayes is trying to put together some sort of book on the subject of exercise, yet the finished product amounts to a lot of flotsam and jetsam. It's as if he is trying to stitch a quilt with many different pieces of fabric, some rough, some smooth, some delicate, some heavy, and the result is a quilt that itches, doesn't provide any warmth, and is just plain ugly to look at. It isn't fair to call Sweat: A History of Exercise a hybrid text because Hayes's narrative swerves into so many tangents that half the time the book doesn't even cohere. I think Hayes is trying to stitch together ancient history, memoir, cultural criticism, anatomy and kinesiology into a work that strives to make an important statement about the role of exercise in human life. It certainly isn't what I assumed Sweat would be, and the book fails in many ways.
Most of Sweat amounts to Hayes writing about writing about the process of researching and writing about exercise. No, you didn't just read a big typo. This book is meta in the worst way, an agglomeration of high-minded historical facts that don't gel, solipsistic personal history, sluggish cultural criticism, and just a drop of homoeroticism that registers the heat of an ice cube. The most annoying sections for me where the long passages where he described the librarians and the various libraries he visited to gather material for this book. How does any of that serve the book's thesis? In the second half, Hayes tries to make his case by chronicling the exercise craze of the seventies and eighties, which works but it doesn't do much. Then he shunts in a brief narrative about the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco just to make a claim about why so many gay men are obsessed with exercise and fitness, but this is a fact his target audience will already know. Stories about his attempts to learn boxing and the classes he took to learn physical training hold interest, but the totality of this book is a shoddy mess.
When I read a bad book authored by someone with obvious ties to exclusive literary circles, usually in New York, I can't help thinking snarky, somewhat malicious thoughts. I wonder if Hayes wrote this book merely as a way to justify all of the globetrotting he did. I hate to say it, but if this book had been written by anyone other than the late great Oliver Sacks's partner, it probably wouldn't have been published. I suppose this is what being connected gets you, but everyone involved with this project should have known better.
Most of Sweat amounts to Hayes writing about writing about the process of researching and writing about exercise. No, you didn't just read a big typo. This book is meta in the worst way, an agglomeration of high-minded historical facts that don't gel, solipsistic personal history, sluggish cultural criticism, and just a drop of homoeroticism that registers the heat of an ice cube. The most annoying sections for me where the long passages where he described the librarians and the various libraries he visited to gather material for this book. How does any of that serve the book's thesis? In the second half, Hayes tries to make his case by chronicling the exercise craze of the seventies and eighties, which works but it doesn't do much. Then he shunts in a brief narrative about the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco just to make a claim about why so many gay men are obsessed with exercise and fitness, but this is a fact his target audience will already know. Stories about his attempts to learn boxing and the classes he took to learn physical training hold interest, but the totality of this book is a shoddy mess.
When I read a bad book authored by someone with obvious ties to exclusive literary circles, usually in New York, I can't help thinking snarky, somewhat malicious thoughts. I wonder if Hayes wrote this book merely as a way to justify all of the globetrotting he did. I hate to say it, but if this book had been written by anyone other than the late great Oliver Sacks's partner, it probably wouldn't have been published. I suppose this is what being connected gets you, but everyone involved with this project should have known better.
February 12, 2022
More memoir than history, not badly written just not what the title implies.
November 16, 2021
As with the author, it had really never occurred to me to consider the history of exercise. Aside from sport, I always considered deliberate exercise to be a relatively modern invention due to our movement toward an information-based society lousy with labor-saving devices. In a thorough exploration that included lots of travel and many ancient texts, the author investigates that premise and looks to the past to see what the physicians and thinkers of the time thought about exercise. He then considers his own experiences with exercise in that context.
The draw here is really the author's skill as a storyteller. The book covers a wide range of topics (everything from Title IX, AIDS, Jane Fonda, and a truly revolting ancient use for sweat) and it's really a testament to his abilities that I got so invested in his story of trying to get a library card in France. That was a recurring experience while reading this--I cared about things that, objectively, I had no real reason to, simply because they were written so well.
I was troubled by one bit of fairly harsh fat shaming. It was a direct quote from the classical texts he was reviewing, but it went entirely unchallenged in the author's commentary, which I think was a missed opportunity. People come in all shapes and sizes, plenty of fat people exercise, and no one deserves to have their body written off as inherently ugly.
This book would definitely be of interest to exercise enthusiasts, but also anyone interested in public health, renaissance and humanist thought, or just anyone looking for a well-written non-fiction book to expand their general knowledge base. This is an interesting text that goes down easy.
Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review!
The draw here is really the author's skill as a storyteller. The book covers a wide range of topics (everything from Title IX, AIDS, Jane Fonda, and a truly revolting ancient use for sweat) and it's really a testament to his abilities that I got so invested in his story of trying to get a library card in France. That was a recurring experience while reading this--I cared about things that, objectively, I had no real reason to, simply because they were written so well.
I was troubled by one bit of fairly harsh fat shaming. It was a direct quote from the classical texts he was reviewing, but it went entirely unchallenged in the author's commentary, which I think was a missed opportunity. People come in all shapes and sizes, plenty of fat people exercise, and no one deserves to have their body written off as inherently ugly.
This book would definitely be of interest to exercise enthusiasts, but also anyone interested in public health, renaissance and humanist thought, or just anyone looking for a well-written non-fiction book to expand their general knowledge base. This is an interesting text that goes down easy.
Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review!
October 22, 2022
Trails off on random tangents. This author can’t seem to decide if this is a memoir, nonfiction, history book, etc. It’s all over the place and so poorly organized.
He also spews some bs with many weak arguments and gross oversimplifications such as, “One is far more likely to lose weight by drastically reducing calories.” He offers no footnote, citation or elaboration on this. This self indulgent narrative and sporadic storytelling makes this one of my least favorite reads probably of all time.
He also spews some bs with many weak arguments and gross oversimplifications such as, “One is far more likely to lose weight by drastically reducing calories.” He offers no footnote, citation or elaboration on this. This self indulgent narrative and sporadic storytelling makes this one of my least favorite reads probably of all time.
March 9, 2024
This could easily have been a DNF but it provided sufficient background noise as an audiobook for morning runs. A few interesting nuggets but largely just a guy going on and on about his own workouts and search for old books on exercise.
August 10, 2022
An eminently readable history of exercise, touching on the many aspects and types of exercise, and interspersed with the author's own musings. Really enjoyed this. His musings as he looks at a Monet painting, while doing moderate walking, as prescribed by Mancini, a post Mercuriale doctor (you need to read the book to get the reference)….”that is how to paint as it is how to live - to the very border. Make a mess of it if you must. Just don’t leave anything blank.” Good advice.
April 5, 2022
These kinds of history-slash-memoir books are hit or miss for me. I guess it's the authors themselves that make the difference. Hayes is great and really carries the book, switching nicely between historical research and personal nostalgia.
August 15, 2022
A nonfiction book about the history of exercise, mostly focusing on the oldest developments and not so much the 20th century and beyond.
I thought it was interesting in places, but it's one of those books that could've been an article. Lots of the author doing research in libraries, and what the various libraries and librarians were like. Lots of filler.
I thought the old stuff was interesting in limited amounts, but missed reading about more recent developments in exercise history.
I thought it was interesting in places, but it's one of those books that could've been an article. Lots of the author doing research in libraries, and what the various libraries and librarians were like. Lots of filler.
I thought the old stuff was interesting in limited amounts, but missed reading about more recent developments in exercise history.
February 17, 2022
Enthralling
A beautifully structured, entertaining and erudite book. I can't recommend it highly enough. I read it almost in one sitting, not my usual skimming of pages, rather appreciating each page. I accept that as a life long exercise nut who also happens to really like libraries and archives It's the perfect read for me. Beyond that I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good read. Fascinating
A beautifully structured, entertaining and erudite book. I can't recommend it highly enough. I read it almost in one sitting, not my usual skimming of pages, rather appreciating each page. I accept that as a life long exercise nut who also happens to really like libraries and archives It's the perfect read for me. Beyond that I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good read. Fascinating
August 28, 2025
Telling me I was only 72% through this book when all I had was around 25 pages left? Honestly, they need to understand that no one reads the bloody acknowledgements! But I would like to thank Edward Hirsch, Arlene Shaner and Jean-Michel Agasse…
I really wanted to like this book more. I very much enjoyed the start (after 20 pages) and the middle, but it really lost me towards the end. It just turned into a biography about his life instead of a history of exercise.
What to read next? Suggestions appreciated.
I really wanted to like this book more. I very much enjoyed the start (after 20 pages) and the middle, but it really lost me towards the end. It just turned into a biography about his life instead of a history of exercise.
What to read next? Suggestions appreciated.
November 14, 2025
In between the many MANY MANNNNNY anecdotes of the author's life, you get some mildly interesting tidbits of information.
So many pointless parts of the book, like one whole paragraph explaining how to do a push up and another about the author's interaction with RGB. Why? What does this have to do with the history of exercise?
This book was mostly stories about the author’s own experiences with exercise classes and travel adventures. Each chapter was disjointed and it was a toss-up if it had anything to do with history or not. I almost quit it several times (which says a lot for me).
So many pointless parts of the book, like one whole paragraph explaining how to do a push up and another about the author's interaction with RGB. Why? What does this have to do with the history of exercise?
This book was mostly stories about the author’s own experiences with exercise classes and travel adventures. Each chapter was disjointed and it was a toss-up if it had anything to do with history or not. I almost quit it several times (which says a lot for me).
August 2, 2025
Interesting, but more a narrative of the author during his research on the history of exercise. He has a strong voice but I don’t care about his personal history with working out as much as I care about the complete history of exercise in general.
Probably would have enjoyed it more if I had a stronger understanding of what the book was going to be, but couldn’t wait to finish it and have it be done
Probably would have enjoyed it more if I had a stronger understanding of what the book was going to be, but couldn’t wait to finish it and have it be done
November 10, 2023
Not what the cover promises - it's not a history of exercise as much as it is one man's travel diary. At least in the first half.
Okce you get used to the (at times) cringy dialogue, it gives some interesting perspectives. Ling gymnatik, jane fonda, gay gyms, exercise and hunk culture in relation to the AIDS epidemic ... that oart was good. I dont know if i could really recommend this to anyone, but it was an i teresting enough commute read.
Okce you get used to the (at times) cringy dialogue, it gives some interesting perspectives. Ling gymnatik, jane fonda, gay gyms, exercise and hunk culture in relation to the AIDS epidemic ... that oart was good. I dont know if i could really recommend this to anyone, but it was an i teresting enough commute read.
January 17, 2024
It's fine but I'd say only about a third of the book is history. The other two thirds are memoir, and the author's account of jetting off to various parts of Europe while researching for the book. I felt like I learned more about the author's research process than about the actual fruits of that research.
February 2, 2025
7/10. A really engaging look at the history of all types of exercise, peppered with personal stories from Hayes' own fitness journey. It's not his finest hour, and when he says that there was a 4 year pause in working on it, that's no surprise, as if he came back to the manuscript just to finish it quickly and get it out there. Still, it's worth a read and good to be back in the Hayesiverse.
August 30, 2022
This is the third book by Bill Hayes I've read - the others being Insomniac City and How We Live Now. I've enjoyed Bill's writing style and found Sweat to be no different. While I found the history portion interesting, I found the personal stories and anecdotes to be most enjoyable.
October 6, 2025
pretty fitting that i read the last third of this book while jogging on a treadmill
October 30, 2022
Not going to say this was the main reason I signed back up for Yoga classes but this was a contributing factor.
December 19, 2022
This was a fine book, but I didn't feel like it delivered on the title. Instead of being a history of exercise, it was more of a memoir of the author's relationship with exercise and the process of researching the book. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't the book I wanted to read.
April 21, 2022
I love everything Bill Hayes writes, even when it's really really sad. Luckily, I already knew about all the sad stuff that happens in this book (including the COVID-19 pandemic) so I could just enjoy the way he researches his topic and the way he tells his story. It even made me decide to do a little exercise.
June 4, 2023
I don’t think that this is what I expected it is be. I found it more memoir than the history of exercise.
February 13, 2022
Lot more introspective than I expected and a heavier focus on the classical period but picked up for me in the second half as I got more used to the tone and different periods of exercise history were explored.
March 14, 2022
I enjoy this author’s approach to nonfiction writing - one of my favorites of his!
July 3, 2022
Occasionally an actual review of the history of exercise, though it lapses into (very) long memoir-ish segments about the author's various trips and his interior musings while he learned about the history of exercise in ancient Greece and Rome. He then skips a couple centuries and discusses mid-2oth century America before another long memoir section about AIDS, his own closeness to many victims, and the toll it took on him and his community. All of which would be fine, except the book is billed and advertised and excerpted as "A History of Exercise" and not "A memoir of Bill Hayes learning about exercise in Ancient Greece" which is not something I would've read.
In short I'd guesstimate the number of words spent on the history of exercise post-1900 is equivalent to the number of words he spends describing various libraries and librarians who he meets during his research.
In short I'd guesstimate the number of words spent on the history of exercise post-1900 is equivalent to the number of words he spends describing various libraries and librarians who he meets during his research.
December 15, 2021
I received an ARC of this one through a Goodreads Giveaway. The history of exercise traced through historical documents were fascinating. I could, however, have done without Hayes' own descriptions of his personal workouts. Honestly, it's like every gym rat in the world thinks that someone else cares about what exercises they are doing and that's just not the case. If it had been more seamlessly integrated with the historical elements, I might have been able to tolerate it better, but it was very choppy - "look at me, I work out" - history - "oh, I'm doing stuff again" - history. I cared less about his own personal stories than I do about a seven-year-old's two-hour rendition of a five-minute Minecraft video. If his own personal nonsense was taken out of the book entirely, this would have been one to keep, as it is, it is most definitely not.
March 2, 2022
I guess I'm not that interested in the history of exercise. I did love the more personal aspects though. Bill Hayes is a beautiful writer.
March 27, 2022
This was one of the worst books I've ever read. I don't understand what the purpose was. The author intertwines his personal stories that aren't terribly relevant into a journey to find historical evidence of exercise prior to 1950 while not sharing said evidence with the reader in a clear manner.
I would prefer to read Dora the Explorer to a three year for the duration it took me to get through this steaming pile of ****. Do yourself a favour and find a hobby you don't enjoy rather than reading this book.
I would prefer to read Dora the Explorer to a three year for the duration it took me to get through this steaming pile of ****. Do yourself a favour and find a hobby you don't enjoy rather than reading this book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews