The Secret To Superhuman Strength
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The Secret To Superhuman Strength
''The Secret to Superhuman Strength'' is a 2021 graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel. The book has six "positive" reviews and eight "rave" reviews, according to review aggregator Book Marks. In it she chronicles the "exercise epoch" of body building, fitness fads, outdoor sports, and the popularization of Asian martial and healing arts. Describing herself as a "vigorous type" and a bit of an " exercise freak", she analyzes the reasons for this as ranging from "typical stress management" to slightly "perverse fixation on muscles", starting in early childhood seeing advertisements and workout videos by Charles Atlas and Jack Lalanne. She admits her "ontological confusion" was induced by "non-stop television watching" typical of the baby boomer / generation x cusp. The book explores the influence of aspirational branding, and advertising athletic and outdoor wear on body image and gender dysphoria Gender dysphoria (GD) is the distress a person experiences due to a mismatch bet ...
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Alison Bechdel
Alison Bechdel ( ; born September 10, 1960) is an American cartoonist. Originally known for the long-running comic strip ''Dykes to Watch Out For'', she came to critical and commercial success in 2006 with her graphic memoir ''Fun Home'', which was subsequently adapted as a musical that won a Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015. In 2012, she released her second graphic memoir ''Are You My Mother?'' She was a 2014 recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" Award. She is also known for originating the Bechdel test. Early life Bechdel was born in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. She is the daughter of Helen Augusta (née Fontana; 1933–2013) and Bruce Allen Bechdel (1936–1980). Her family was Roman Catholic. Her father was an army veteran who was stationed in West Germany. He was also a high school English teacher, working full-time and operating a funeral home part-time. Her mother was an actress and teacher. Both of her parents contributed to her career as a cartoonist. ''Literature Reso ...
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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (; HMH) is an American publisher of textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, reference works, and fiction and non-fiction for both young readers and adults. The company is based in the Financial District, Boston, Boston Financial District. It was formerly known as Houghton Mifflin Company, but it changed its name following the 2007 acquisition of Harcourt (publisher), Harcourt Publishing. Prior to March 2010, it was a subsidiary of EMPG, Education Media and Publishing Group Limited, an Irish-owned holding company registered in the Cayman Islands and formerly known as Riverdeep. History Ticknor and Allen, 1832 In 1832, William Ticknor and John Allen purchased a bookselling business in Boston and began to involve themselves in publishing; James T. Fields joined as a partner in 1843. Fields and Ticknor gradually gathered an impressive list of writers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau. The d ...
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Literary Hub
Literary Hub is a daily literary website that launched in 2015 by Grove Atlantic president and publisher Morgan Entrekin, American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame editor Terry McDonell, and Electric Literature founder Andy Hunter. Content Focused on literary fiction and nonfiction, ''Literary Hub'' publishes personal and critical essays, interviews, and book excerpts from over 100 partners, including independent presses (New Directions Publishing, Graywolf Press), large publishers (Simon & Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf), bookstores (Book People, Politics and Prose), non-profits (PEN America), and literary magazines (''The Paris Review'', n+1). The mission of ''Literary Hub'' is to be the "site readers can rely on for smart, engaged, entertaining writing about all things books." The website has been featured in ''The Washington Post'', ''The Guardian'', and ''Poets & Writers''. In 2019, Literary Hub launched their new blog, ''The Hub'', alongside LitHub Radio, a "network of b ...
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Exercise Addiction
Exercise addiction is a state characterized by a compulsive engagement in any form of physical exercise, despite negative consequences. While regular exercise is generally a healthy activity, exercise addiction generally involves performing excessive amounts of exercise to the detriment of physical health, spending too much time exercising to the detriment of personal and professional life, and exercising regardless of physical injury. It may also involve a state of dependence upon regular exercise which involves the occurrence of severe withdrawal symptoms when the individual is unable to exercise. Differentiating between addictive and healthy exercise behaviors is difficult but there are key factors in determining which category a person may fall into. Exercise addiction shows a high comorbidity with eating disorders. Exercise addiction is not listed as a disorder in the fourth revision of the ''Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders'' (DSM-IV). This type of addi ...
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Charles Atlas
Charles Atlas (born Angelo Siciliano; October 30, 1892 – December 24, 1972) was an Italian-born American bodybuilder best remembered as the developer of a bodybuilding method and its associated exercise program which spawned a landmark advertising campaign featuring his name and likeness; it has been described as one of the longest-lasting and most memorable ad campaigns of all time.Kannenberg, Gene. "The Ad That Made an Icon Out of Mac"
''Hogan's Alley''. Retrieved June 9, 2019.
Atlas himself to develop his body from that of a "scrawny weakling", eventually becoming the most popular bodybuilder of his day. He took the name "Charles ...
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Jack LaLanne
Francois Henri LaLanne (; September 26, 1914 – January 23, 2011) was an American fitness and nutrition guru and motivational speaker. He described himself as being a "sugarholic" and a "junk food junkie" until he was aged 15. He also had behavioral problems, but "turned his life around" after listening to a public lecture about the benefits of good nutrition by health food pioneer Paul Bragg. During his career, he came to believe that the country's overall health depended on the health of its population, and referred to physical culture and nutrition as "the salvation of America." Decades before health and fitness began being promoted by celebrities like Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons, LaLanne was already widely recognized for publicly preaching the health benefits of regular exercise and a good diet. He published numerous books on fitness and hosted the fitness television program ''The Jack LaLanne Show'' from 1951 to 1985. As early as 1936, at the age of 21, he opened one of ...
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Body Image
Body image is a person's thoughts, feelings and perception of the aesthetics or sexual attractiveness of their own body. The concept of body image is used in a number of disciplines, including neuroscience, psychology, medicine, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, philosophy, cultural and feminist studies; the media also often uses the term. Across these disciplines, there is no single consensus definition, but broadly speaking body image consists of the ways people view themselves; their memories, experiences, assumptions, and comparisons about their own appearances; and their overall attitudes towards their own respective heights, shapes, and weights—all of which are shaped by prevalent social and cultural ideals. Body image can be negative ("body negativity") or positive (" body positivity"). A person with a negative body image may feel self-conscious or ashamed, and may feel that others are more attractive. In a time where social media holds a very important place and is used fre ...
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Gender Dysphoria
Gender dysphoria (GD) is the distress a person experiences due to a mismatch between their gender identitytheir personal sense of their own genderand their sex assigned at birth. The diagnostic label gender identity disorder (GID) was used until 2013 with the release of the diagnostic manual DSM-5. The condition was renamed to remove the stigma associated with the term ''disorder''. People with gender dysphoria commonly identify as transgender. Gender nonconformity is not the same thing as gender dysphoria and does not always lead to dysphoria or distress. The causes of gender incongruence are unknown but a gender identity likely reflects genetic, biological, environmental, and cultural factors. Treatment for gender dysphoria may include supporting the individual's gender expression or their desire for hormone therapy or surgery. Treatment may also include counseling or psychotherapy. Some researchers and transgender people support declassification of the condition because t ...
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Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the late 1820s and 1830s in New England. "Transcendentalism is an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson." A core belief is in the inherent goodness of people and nature, and while society and its institutions have corrupted the purity of the individual, people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. Transcendentalists saw divine experience inherent in the everyday, rather than believing in a distant heaven. Transcendentalists saw physical and spiritual phenomena as part of dynamic processes rather than discrete entities. Transcendentalism is one of the first philosophical currents that emerged in the United States;Coviello, Peter. "Transcendentalism" ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature''. Oxford University Press, 2004. ''Oxford Reference Online''. Web. 23 Oct. 2011 it is therefore a key early point ...
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Romantic Era
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism, clandestine literature, paganism, idealization of nature, suspicion of science and industrialization, and glorification of the past with a strong preference for the medieval rather than the classical. It was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific rationalization of nature. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education, chess, social sciences, and the natural sciences. It had a significant and complex effect on politics, with romantic thinkers influencing conservatism, liber ...
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Beatnik
Beatniks were members of a social movement in the 1950s that subscribed to an anti-materialistic lifestyle. History In 1948, Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase "Beat Generation", generalizing from his social circle to characterize the underground, anticonformist youth gathering in New York City, New York at that time. The name came up in conversation with John Clellon Holmes, who published an early Beat Generation novel titled ''Go (Holmes novel), Go'' (1952), along with the manifesto ''This Is the Beat Generation'' in ''The New York Times Magazine''. In 1954, Nolan Miller (author), Nolan Miller published his third novel ''Why I Am So Beat'' (Putnam), detailing the weekend parties of four students. "Beat" came from underworld slang—the world of hustlers, drug addicts, and petty thieves, where Allen Ginsberg and Kerouac sought inspiration. "Beat" was slang for "beaten down" or downtrodden, but to Kerouac and Ginsberg, it also had a spiritual connotation as in "beatitude". Oth ...
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Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of Book Publishing and Bookselling". With 51 issues a year, the emphasis today is on book reviews. The magazine was founded by bibliographer Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliography ... Frederick Leypoldt in the late 1860s, and had various titles until Leypoldt settled on the name ''The Publishers' Weekly'' (with an apostrophe) in 1872. The publication was a compilation of information about newly published books, collected from publishers and from other sources by Leypoldt, for an audience of booksellers. By 1876, ''The Publishers' Weekly ...
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