Virtual Event: Bill Hayes with Bonnie Tsui

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Join us on Monday, January 24th at 7pm PT when Bill Hayes is joined by Bonnie Tsui to discuss his latest book, Sweat: A History of Exercise, on Zoom!

Watch online by registering here
https://us02web.zoom.us/…/reg…/WN_qTIn5bVcQCidTIZ8lRRRnA

This event was previously advertised as in-person, but we have had to make changes to accommodate for the Omicron variant. Thanks for understanding.

Praise for Sweat

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

“Bill Hayes has an unusual set of skills . . . He is part science writer, part memoirist, part culture explainer.” —The New York Times

“Playful and powerful . . .profoundly moving . . . Hayes writes with so much panache that reading this book is thrilling.” —The Boston Globe on Five Quarts

About Sweat

From Insomniac City author Bill Hayes, “who can tackle just about any subject . . . and make you glad he did” (SF Chronicle)—a cultural, scientific, and personal history of exercise.

Exercise is our modern obsession, and we have the fancy workout gear and fads from HIIT to spin classes to hot yoga to prove it. Exercise—a form of physical activity distinct from sports, play, or athletics—was an ancient obsession, too, but as a chapter in human history, it’s been largely overlooked. In Sweat, Bill Hayes runs, jogs, swims, spins, walks, bikes, boxes, lifts, sweats, and downward-dogs his way through the origins of different forms of exercise, chronicling how they have evolved over time, dissecting the dynamics of human movement.

Hippocrates, Plato, Galen, Susan B. Anthony, Jack LaLanne, and Jane Fonda, among many others, make appearances in Sweat, but chief among the historical figures is Girolamo Mercuriale, a Renaissance-era Italian physician who aimed singlehandedly to revive the ancient Greek “art of exercising” through his 1569 book De arte gymnastica. Though largely forgotten over the past five centuries, Mercuriale and his illustrated treatise were pioneering, and are brought back to life in the pages of Sweat. Hayes ties his own personal experience—and ours—to the cultural and scientific history of exercise, from ancient times to the present day, giving us a new way to understand its place in our lives in the twenty-first century.

About Bill Hayes

Bill Hayes is the author of How We Live Now, Insomniac City, The Anatomist, and How New York Breaks Your Heart, among other books. Hayes is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times. Hayes has completed the screenplay for a film adaptation of Insomniac City, currently in the works from Hopscotch Features, and he is also a co-editor of Oliver Sacks’s posthumous books. He lives in New York. Visit his website at billhayes.com.

About Bonnie Tsui

Bonnie Tsui lives, swims, and surfs in the Bay Area. A longtime contributor to the New York Times and California Sunday Magazine, she has been the recipient of the Jane Rainie Opel Young Alumna Award from Harvard University, the Lowell Thomas Gold Award, and a National Press Foundation Fellowship. Her last book, American Chinatown: A People’s History of Five Neighborhoods, won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and Best of 2009 Notable Bay Area Books selection. Her website is bonnietsui.com.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.