Product Description
During two feverish decades between the world wars, Bernarr Macfadden did more to educate the world about healthy eating, alternative medicine, regular sexual activity, and exercise than anyone in history. His disciples… More >>
Product Description
During two feverish decades between the world wars, Bernarr Macfadden did more to educate the world about healthy eating, alternative medicine, regular sexual activity, and exercise than anyone in history. His disciples… More >>
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If you liked Charlatan or enjoy popular biography, then you should try this. It is much as described in the NYT review.
Rating: 4 / 5
“Mr America” by Mark Adams Is a very interesting book about a very interesting man, Bernarr MacFadden who helped shape and was shaped by his era .Bernarr MacFadden is remembered as “The Father Of Physical Culture” It is the story of a man who started life with little formal education, a history of poor health, and came from an abusive childhood yet went on to build a publishing empire and became one of the best known and most influential people of his generation. He lived during the Industrial Revolution which was an era of great change much the same as the world today. It caused a great migration from the farms to the cities which in turn caused massive changes in life styles and the skills needed to earn a living. It took men from the physical strength oriented labor required during the pre-mechanization days of working on the farm to the less physical office and machine oriented jobs that replaced them. This may well have been a driving force in the interest in performing strongmen and the interest in physical culture that was such a big part of MacFadden’s passion and the industry that he helped found. MacFadden’s life and accomplishments remind me to the old saying that “struggle will either make you or break you”. In his case the struggle made him largely because of the proactive- positive way that he reacted too it. I have always had an interest in history and biography and particularly in physical culture history. MacFadden’s life was tied to contemporaries of his who were also part of the personal development industry. The one major event that kick started the whole strength and physical culture movement in the United States was the Chicago Exhibition of 1893. The physical culture center piece of that event was Eugen Sandow who had a build the likes of which had not been seen and promoted in the modern world up until that time. Sandow’s manager was Florenz [Flo] Ziegfeld, the legendary promoter who later gained fame as the promoter of the Ziegfeld Follies. He helped Sandow develop a show that perfectly displayed his physique and used revolutionary highlight directed lighting. MacFadden was able to see Sandow perform which had a major effect on MacFadden’s thinking and future. Another individual who was influenced by Sandow at the Chicago Exhibition was Alan Calvert who went on to found the Milo Barbell Company and began mass producing the first American Barbells in 1902. One individual, not mentioned in the book, that had to have had a strong influence on MacFadden was Alois P. Swoboda whose “Conscious Evolution” mail order mind/body personal development course dominated American Physical Culture before MacFadden started his publishing activities. Swoboda counted as his students Amercan Presidents, business leaders and the American Intelligencia of the time. Bob Hoffman,The Father Of World Weightlifting, and founder of The York Barbell Company, which ultimately purchased Alan Calvert’s Milo Barbell Company, said that His father was a student of Alois P. Swoboda before he was born in 1898. He also said that his father had the best build that he had ever seen and he got it from practicing Alois P. Swoboda’s non apparatus bodyweight tensing exercises. These tensing exercises were of the same type that were later promoted by MacFadden. Here another linkage comes into play as Charles Atlas said, “Everything that I know I learned from A.P. Swoboda.” Bernarr MacFadden made Charles Atlas a celebrity when Atlas won two perfect man contests sponsored by MacFadden including “The World’s Most Perfectly Developed Man”. When Dr.Frederick Tilney got the Idea to start the Atlas Course both he and Atlas were employees of MacFadden. The Charles Atlas Dynamic Tension Course was initially promoted in MacFaddens’ publications including “Physical Culture Magazine”
I found “Mr America” a very interesting and informative book about a very interesting man who lived in and influenced a very
interesting period in America history. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 5 / 5
It was a fun read. An interesting story of an interesting man who came to believe his own hype. I really enjoyed it.
Rating: 5 / 5
Mark Adams rescued Bernarr Macfadden from the memory hole. Literally this is history at its’ best.
Bernarr Macfadden shows up on the 1950′s TV show, “What’s My Line.” He is instantly recognized by the audience and the blind-folded guests have to tease out the guests identity.
In under a generation he’s not part of the American cultural scene, despite having a huge effect on our culture.
History, at its’ best, brings something new that was lost.
This book achieves it.
Kudos to the author.
Rating: 5 / 5
“Nothing that I have ever read of Macfadden, including that which I have written myself, has ever captured him.” – Fulton Oursler, Macfadden’s right-hand man. This quote really sums up a lot about Bernarr Macfadden, a very enigmatic individual and that is not an overstatement. His life spanned from the years immediately after the Civil War to the Eisenhower Presidency and rarely was he ever a bit player.
Macfadden’s thrust on America and to a lesser extent Europe and the world as well were two-folded, first, his health message which seems largely sound though it had a good dose of quackery and 2nd, his publishing empire.
To read this book is too get snapshots of American society during the Industrial Revolution, both World Wars, the gay nineties, roaring twenties up and the Cold War.
But when Macfadden first went to gymnasiums, he saw Indian Clubs 2 Pound Pair with DVD and weights and other exercise equipment and it made a great impression on him.
Fulton Oursler mentioned above authored Greatest Story Ever Told (Great Reads), a life of Christ based on the gospels of John, Mark, Matthew and Luke but he wrote this basically after he left the Macfadden publishing empire and Oursler found religion. From diverse friendships such as this, Macfadden actually knew so many reknown personalities from those days, it is almost unfair to name just a few at the risk of ignoring so many however for the record, the famed author Upton Sinclair went to his health colonies, Macfadden knew well the likes of Mussolini or “Muscleini” as he admiringly called the Il Duce, the Roosevelts, Teddy, Franklin and Eleanor, Rudolph Valentino, Charles Atlas whom the author convincingly asserts would later sell courses and make a fortune which were basically just revisions of the 1906 brochures of Macfadden, Physical Culture, his flagship magazine and his publishing empire, J. Edgar Hoover and many more and when he did not know the central personalities, his magazines were still often on the perimeter of current events such as in the tragic Lindbergh kidnapping.
Therefore, it is clear that much more could be written on Macfadden especially via the health viewpoint such as why was he such a raw foodist? Why was walking his preferred exercise? And honestly with Macfadden there is much to admire but what is it with the womanizing? Probably a sign of those times, depressingly. How about eugenics? And lastly, though his fasting surely had its benefits, is it possible fasting during his last illness contributed to his death? You know, he contracted juandice and more and unfortunately, he could not be saved in around his 87th year.
What Macfadden said deserves to be taken with a grain of salt and make that organic sea salt.
Rating: 5 / 5