Customer Reviews

American Hunks: The Muscular Male Body in Popular Culture, 1860-1970

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"American Hunks" is a bonanaza of vintage muscleman photos. With his inimitable flair and mischevious sense of fun, Mark Chapman and Brett Josef Grubisic have gathered hundreds of the best images from the world of the hunk, muscleman, he-man or gymnast/wrestler. The book presents over 100 years of male muscle images from sources as disparate as cement bags, shoe polish tins, Coke ads, cigarette packs and underwear, not to mention a wide variety of studio photos. Each image has a welcome paragraph to describe it. There are introductions by both authors, as well. Though there are some familiar photographs (due to their iconic nature), I was happy suprised to see hundreds of images for the first time. This volume is a must have for all fans of the male form and physical culture, all presented in excellent quality prints and with panache and wit. This is a keeper!

It's been said women are constantly objectified in the media... but could the same be said of men? "American Hunks" takes a scholarly look at the use of the perfect physical specimen of man and how it has been used as a sex symbol over the years. For well over a century the image of musclebound hunks has been on countless items, selling not only to women, but men as well, both gay and straight. The photos within do contain nudity, but the main focus is on the evolution of the use of the hunk in media. "American Hunks" is well worth considering for any coffee table book collector.

A wonderful book, with its many excellent photos, the more recent ones bringing back memories. Those were once the only pictures we had to fantasize about the ideal man/lover... It's mostly pictures with captions. with only short chapter introductions. Thoroughly enjoyable!
But one thing is missing: hardly a word about censorship or prudery, which is the first thing you think about seeing some of those fig leaves, posing pouches and even painted-by-hand blotches to obscure the offending parts in many early photos. We only read that a studio was forced to shut down, or forbidden to send by post, and it all relaxed in 1967. Still, there are many photos to prove these must have been clandestine.

this book shows the thread of exotic body builder type images that have been with us since the dawn of photography.Here we find body builders,gymnasts,sexy movie stars that will truly inspire physique lovers.The book is presented with black and white vintage,as well as poster colored,and campy imagery too.It's sexy with a healthy sense of humor.It ironically includes an image of naked Germans getting a physical,even though they obviously don't fit in with the American theme.This is a great buy and entertaining! there is non pornographic nudity,very natural and stately.

"American Hunks" is a book that (refreshingly) does not make titillation of the reader's prurient interests a priority, instead taking a generally sober attitude toward the historical and artistic documentation of male musculature and depiction in American culture. By giving the reader text in small doses, usually with short introductions and detailed captions, this book guides its audience from the hesitant first steps of pride in muscular development during the Victorian and Edwardian eras through to the full-blown muscle-building fascination of the 1980s, without spoon feeding.

This book will make an excellent reference, demonstrating the iconography of the flexed arm disembodied on many grocery products, showing the way to tell social mores and amateur from professional photography in many decades, and noting the many changes in the cultural "ideal" male body. It may also prove therapeutic for men with bodyimage difficulties, for instance demonstrating that the thick-trunked wrestler's body was considered highly desirable in the 1800s, so just because it isn't in vogue now does not mean it isn't beautiful. But this book is most useful as a social study in the development of male and female psyches over the past century or two.

Artists will find interesting concepts in this book, leading to the successful simulation of antique imagery, readoption of recently discarded techniques, and perfect comparative reference bases. Historians and geographers will also find interesting concepts in this book, as it shows phenomenae not often documented and the shifts of the center of masculine iconography across the American world.

There is one down side to this book: typos are frequent and obvious. Hopefully the publishers will fix this in future editions.

What a wonderful book. I was born in 1951 and have strong memories of all these artifacts, all these things that, in the most subtle ways, contributed to my identity as a homosexual man. But I have never had access to a compendium that could pull it all together--primarily visually--and with wisps of text, cue me in to the the confirming narrative that was going on in my life, a narrative that, eventually, included pictorial images that go back (as does the book) to the invention of photography itself. Regrettably, there are still many people, possibly the majority of Americans, who would view such a book with an arched eyebrow, if not actual disgust, which is too bad. It is, as concisely as possible (350 pp), as good a commentary on the role "nurture" played in the creation of my personality as I could offer anyone, gay or straight. Put simply, in my childhood my father, a WW II veteran, took me to see "he man" movies--Hercules, Tarzan, Ben Hur, Tonka, even the Frankie and Annette series--and we always watched "he man" series on TV--Superman, Cheyenne, The Rifleman. At the same time, he shook his head as we drove past the gyms that created the stars of those movies. "Stay away from those places." I have a better understanding, now, of the two very different battles that were going on in our heads at that time.