On Muscle: The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters

By Bonnie Tsui

Book Overview

From the bestselling author of Why We Swim comes a mind-expanding exploration of muscle 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 to us. 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 allow for motion. 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 that follows the path of escape from a Native boarding school--and gives the concept of endurance new 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 Tsui's 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.

On Muscle shows us the poetry in the physical, and the surprising ways muscle can reveal what we're capable of.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1643753088
• ISBN13: 9781643753089
• Release Date: April 2025
• Publisher: Algonquin Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

More Than Show: A Review of On Muscle by Bonnie Tsui

Most of us relate to muscle through a cultural lens built almost entirely around appearance, the celebrated bodies of athletes and actors, the flex, the visible proof of effort. Muscle as spectacle. Muscle as performance. Bonnie Tsui goes considerably deeper. On Muscle is an illuminating exploration of what muscle actually is and does, its intimate connection to brain health, its role in systemic physical wellbeing, the remarkable ways exercise stimulates the whole organism far beyond anything visible in a mirror. The shift in perspective this book offers is quietly profound. We are not building muscle to display it. We are developing one of the most essential components of our physical infrastructure so that it can support everything else we are and wish to do. We are not our bodies, but our bodies are the vehicles that make everything else possible. Tsui honors that truth beautifully.