From the bestselling author of Why We Swim comes a mind-expanding exploration of muscle--from our ancient obsession with the ideal human form to the modern science of this amazing and adaptable tissue--that will change the way you think about what moves us through the world. "Remarkable . A singular book about the true meanings of strength and flexibility, about our ability to define who we are and who we might be." --Ed Yong, New York Times bestselling author of An Immense World and I Contain Multitudes In On Muscle , Bonnie Tsui brings her signature blend of science, culture, immersive reporting, and personal narrative to examine not just what muscles are but what they mean, as myth and metaphor. Cardiac, smooth, skeletal--these three different types of muscle in our bodies make our hearts beat; push food through our intestines, blood through our vessels, babies out the uterus; attach to our bones and help us move. But Tsui also traces how muscles have defined beauty--and how they have distorted it--through the ages, and how they play an essential role in our physical and mental health. Tsui introduces us to the first female weightlifter to pick up the famed Scottish Dinnie Stones, then takes us on a 50-mile run through the Nevada desert to follow the path of escape from a Native boarding school, where endurance takes on new layers of meaning. She travels to Oslo, where cutting-edge research reveals how muscles help us bounce back after injury and illness, an important aspect of longevity.

She jumps into the action with a historic Double Dutch club in Washington, D.C., to explain anew what Charles Darwin meant by the brain-body connection. Woven throughout are stories of her childhood with her Chinese immigrant artist dad--a black belt in karate--who schools her from a young age in a kind of quirky, in-house Muscle Academy. Everyone has been asked to make a muscle at some point, to demonstrate strength, fitness, grit--character that's grounded in something you can feel. Tsui shows us the poetry in the physical, and the surprising ways muscle can reveal what we're capable of.