While relaxing in the sauna after his weekly swim, Sven Lindqvist fell into conversation with a heavily muscled young man. His new acquaintance was evangelical about body-building and the encounter challenged Lindqvist's view of the sport as macho, vain and individualistic. As a result, though heading flabbily towards middle age, he decided to attend the local gym.<BR>Lindqvist's bench press sessions had a profound effect on his life. As his body strengthened, he found that he began to dream intensely and to remember long-repressed scenes from childhood.<BR>Here he intersperses the story of his own journey in the gym with the entertaining and bizarre history of body-building. He meditates on what its increased popularity tells us about contemporary society, quoting from the memoirs of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Yukio Mishima and other illuminating sources.