Customer Reviews

Mr. America: How Muscular Millionaire Bernarr Macfadden Transformed the Nation Through Sex, Salad, and the Ultimate Starvation Diet

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As the creator of the [...] web site and an avid collector of Macfadden memorabilia, I was eager to read Mr. America, a biography of Bernarr Macfadden.

Mr. America tells the rags-to-riches story of an incredibly interesting and multi-faceted individual, Bernarr Macfadden, a true self-made man and self-promoter (who even coined his own name). Macfadden was a larger-than life personality who, starting out as a poor and sickly orphan, became an icon for health and strength as well as a multi-millionaire entrepreneur. He had a monumental influence on shaping several industries, from bodybuilding to health foods and exercise to publishing. He was internationally famous during the first half of the twentieth century, but, incredibly, is virtually unknown today.

Mr. America is a comprehensive and well-researched biography, but, more than that, it captures the amazement one is sure to experience when "discovering" Macfadden for the first time. It is exciting to read about such Macfadden "firsts" as promoting the first public bodybuilding contests in America, campaigning against prudery and corsets, battling with censors and the medical profession, advocating natural foods and exercise, publishing the longest-running health magazine in history (nearly 60 years), and launching a whole genre of pulp magazines (True Story, etc.) from which he created a multi-million dollar media empire.

One thing that makes this biography especially enjoyable is how Mr. Adams has tied parts of Macfadden's amazing story to the people and things that the reader is familiar with (such as Jack LaLanne and Nike shoes). Although this book is meticulously researched, it does not read like a stuffy history textbook. Instead, the author tells this amazing story in a conversational style that makes his book especially fun to read.

Bernarr Macfadden is my new personal hero. Mr. America is a real revelation , one of those rare glimpses into a forgotten piece of history that shaped this nation. Or at least this nation's fascination with fitness. Yoga? Macfadden was on to it. Body Building? Macfadden helped popularize it. Dieting, daily workouts, strange and exotic body cleanses,? Macfadden pioneered the trends. He was where it all began.

With such a strong character to guide his biography, Mr. Adams wouldn't need to work very hard to craft a compelling read. But he does work hard, incredibly so, and that's what makes Mr. America the gem that it is. Adams has sorted through personal documents, talked to as many sources as he could find, and synthesized what must have been a mountain of information into a simple but hugely entertaining portrait of an eccentric and well-connected publishing magnate who made Americans care about fitness.

The writing is strong and clear, and Adams has a sharp wit that he does not hesitate to employ. By far, Mr. America is the most fun I've had with a biography in a very, very long time.

If you've never heard of Bernarr MacFadden -- as I hadn't prior to stumbling upon this book -- he's the man invented tabloid culture (without him there would be no TMZ, Access Hollywood or Perez Hilton), introduced America to the concept of "physical fitness", created the first "fad diet" and drew up the blueprints for the "sexual revolution". I could go on and on about everything else McFadden managed to pack into his years on the planet... In short (I know, too late), this is one of those books that proves truth can be way more entertaining than fiction. During the week or so I spent reading it, I found myself relaying one amazing MacFadden story after another to everyone I knew because, truthfully, I couldn't believe that such a bizarre, wild, eccentric personality could have been forgotten for half a decade without at least a Ron Howard bio-pic making it to the screen. If this sounds like a rave, I guess it is. It was an unexpected read that most definitely exceeded my expectations.

Bernarr MacFadden was a larger-than-life health nut, entrepreneur, bodybuilder and wannabe politician.

I first came across his name in a book by Annie Riley Hale published in the 1930's. Both Hale and MacFadden were strongly anti-vaccine and pro-natural health at a time when allopathic medicine was forcibly gaining a monopoly on healing. In her book, Hale defends MacFadden (who published a magazine titled, "Physical Culture") for daring to publish the true-life stories of four women who cured themselves of cancer through the use of a cleansing diet. This action brought the wrath of the allopathic medical community down on MacFadden. It probably wasn't the first, nor was it the last time MacFadden alienated powerful people. He was a scrapper.

This is a great biography - very well written and a lot of fun to read. Not only does it spotlight MacFadden and the birth of the bodybuilding culture, but it also sheds light on the Country as a whole during that time.

MacFadden was not always likable. He certainly had a tumultuous personal life. He was uncompromising, controlling and wildly ambitious. But he was definitely one of a kind. Highly recommended.

I loved this book. It has the perfect mix of facts about America during that time to count as "educational" and interesting quirky details to make a compelling read.

What a great read. McFadden is one of those incredible over-the-top quintessential American characters, of the you-can't-make-this-up variety. A self-made man, a brilliant blowhard, a twisted genius, a media maven and a lifestyle guru before such things existed. When I finished the book, I was ready for the movie because this story was made for Hollywood (Bernarr would agree, I'm sure). Adams's wry tone strikes just the right note throughout, and be sure to read the appendix, his first-person account of following MacFadden's diet-and-exercise regimen, right down to the excessive chewing ("fletcherizing"). Hilarious.

It's my job to read books about the famous individuals buried at the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx - this one is a gem! It's filled with juicy celebrity gossip, the pursuit of the American Dream and what is so surprising is that the diet of our hero is exactly what we all know we're supposed to be doing to stay healthy. In the final section, the author lives like Macfadden and the reader learns to walk a little more, to put down your fork and to add a bit of discipline in your daily routine.

A fun read that takes you back in time and celebrates the desire to live a long and healthy life...while pursuing your dreams and fighting for your causes. Perfect for today's troubled times. It's wonderful that Mark Adams brings this forgotten figure back into our lives.

"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.

This book was so great. My familiy's house in Englewood, New Jersey was around the corner from Macfadden's estate. I used to sneak on to his property and fish in his pond. My father used to refer to him as a "health nut." Reading the book was like a trip down memory lane. The book was really well written and researched. I had no idea that MacFadden had such a massive published empire and was so influential, right or wrongly, on the physical fitness culture. I would heartily recommend this book along with "Muscletown U.S.A." to anyone who wants to know the history of physical fitness and weigh lifting in this country.

Don't feel bad, I had never heard of Bernarr Macfadden before either, but every American who lived in the first half of the 20th Century knew who he was. He was the more muscular of those turn of the century health reformers like Kellogg, Post and Graham, although like them he was obsessed with his bowels -- he even used to eat sand, figuring if it was good enough to clean glass bottles, it ought to be good enough to clean his innards. In addition to basically inventing American body building and strength training directly -- through his long-running magazine Physical Culture, his Healthatorium -- and indirectly (he inspired among others, Charles Atlas, Joe Weider and Jack LaLanne) he also can law claim or take the blame for creating tabloid journalism (his New York Evening Graphic, where Walter Winchell got his start is widely considered the worst newspaper ever) and inspiring reality television -- although it was reality magazines at first; Macfadden published True Story and True Confessions among dozens of other magazines. He was a millionaire, a mover and a shaker, friend of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, but he died broke and -- as you know -- is today largely forgotten. His obscurity is undeserved however. I don't read a lot of biographies but this one was fascinating. The author even guinea-pigged himself out with some of Macfadden's more bizare health and fitness regimens with mixed (but often hilarious) results.