I was riveted by Sweat and its extraordinary tale of the ups and downs of exercise over millennia. Who knew?

Jane Fonda

Perhaps because exercise is such a universal - and universally humbling - part of our lives, Sweat does, seemingly effortlessly, what all good history books should do: take the past and make it vastly more human

The Times

There's a skip to Hayes' step throughout, and the book will certainly ground any January health kick in a grander context

Daily Mail

As a storyteller, Hayes is like Joe Frazier … I would have liked this book to go on longer. Erudite, ludic, eccentric, energetic and historically transporting, it's like falling through a gym and landing in a joust

Zoe Williams, Guardian

Bill Hayes' peripatetic inquiry into the history of exercise is a delight ... You're in for a treat. Hayes weaves his riveting findings in the archives with a revelatory memoir of physical exertion that begins to answer that most human of questions: what does the body mean?

Alison Bechdel, author of 'The Secret to Superhuman Strength'

Charming and idiosyncratic ... A distinctive, often moving blend of historical and memoirist writing ... Hayes's exuberant book tells us what awaits if we can only make it so

NEW YORKER