Brought to you by the overstuffed mind of the People’s Historian, Jamie Lewis, Plague of Strength’s Bite-Size History is the ultimate trivia guide for historical badassery. Featuring biographies of unknown-yet-important historical figures, places, events, and activities, BSH provides its readers with the ability to find themselves and their friends within the context of history.
TLDR: This is the ultimate book to read on the toilet. You should buy it (especially if you like lifting weights or looking at muscular people).
Bite-Sized History opens with a handy timeline for everything lifting and martial arts related, along with major world events, so that you can place the people in the book in their respective time and place.
From there, I’ve broken the book down into the following categories:
The Influencers
Here are some of the most influential people in their respective fields. Loved or hated, infamous or famous, rich or poor, these people were some of the ones who led others to pursue a similar path. Featuring:
- Tilly Anderson: The Cycling World’s Weightlifting Virtuoso and Female Fitness Wear Fashionista
- Sputnik Monroe: The Pro Wrestling Heel Who Helped Desegregate the South
- Luisita Leers: The Acrobat Who Helped Normalize Big Biceps on American Women
- Sig Klein: America’s Earliest God-of-All-Things-Weights Has a Challenge You Can’t Refuse
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Feminism’s Most Vocal Proponent Recommended that Women Lift Weights
- Tommy Chong: Cannabis Culture’s Royalty Is a Meathead Who Used to Work the Front Desk at Gold’s Venice
- Sharon Bruneau: Sexiest Female Bodybuilder of All Time
- The Turners: Weightlifting Culture in America Began With These Socialist German Lifters
- and more!
The Pioneers
Here’s to the pioneers! Without them, this book would be empty.
- Elizabeth Wilkinson Stokes: The Baddest Female Boxer of the 18th Century
- Vic Downs: The Party Beast Who Made Bodypart Splits Popular
- Alan Stephan: The Bodybuilder Fuck Boy Who Taught Powerlifters to Box Squat
- Elizabeth “Lizzie” Jennings Graham: The Badass Woman Who Had San Fransciscan Streetcars Desegregated 100 Years Before the Federal Government Bothered to Try
- Joe Lewis: America’s Best Fighter of the 70s?
- Martha Tempest: Possibly the First Female Fitness Athlete on The Cover of a Fitness Magazine
- Val Vasilieff: This Mr. America Got Americans Jacked By Selling Them Weight Gainer Filled With D-Bol
- Mary Williamson Macfadden: Feminism’s Fittest Godmother
- Bert Goodrich and George Redpath: The Guys Who Invented the Modern Co-Ed Fitness Gym, Leg Curl, and Leg Extension
- and a few others besides!
and it keeps going from there!
There are also sections on The Underdogs (featuring such characters as boxer George Chuvalo, bench-pressing badass and bodybuilding phenom Bill Seno; Arnold’s sidekick Eddie Giuliani, and more;
The GOATs, featuring badasses like the only powerlifter to ever be played by Robin Williams in a feature film, Dr. Oliver Sacks, plus swordfighters, WSM competitors, the woman who outlifted Sandow, and more;
The Weirdos, featuring people so goddamned weird that they couldn’t even rightly fall into the other categories but did amazing shit like desegregating baseball;
The Artists, which highlights a couple of artists you didn’t know were strongmen, such as Leonardo Davinci;
The Brawlers, covering everyone from bare-knuckle fighting god Lenny McLean to Lincoln’s assassin’s dad, who was a drunken brawler and a world-famous actor;
The Noteworthy, featuring really cool people who should be known but maybe weren’t given as much press as they deserved, featuring all kinds of wild motherfuckers like a bodybuilding armwrestler and minor rock star who claimed to be Elvis’s brother and played a flying v acoustic guitar and a 132lb US Olympic weightlifter who had a better strict press and biceps than everyone in your gym at every weightclass;
The Sluts, which is exactly what it sounds like;
and The Background, which gives you random bits of background information on everything from the Early Mr. America Contests to Saint Patrick’s real value to the Western World to the cough syrup that shows you how few strength athletes of the late 19th century could pass a WADA drug test.
Amaze your friends with the knowledge no one around you will want you to know, because you won’t be able to stop yourself babbling about it!
203pp ebook. Print version is in the works!
