Download or read book Bench Press written by Sven Lindqvist and published by Granta Books. This book was released on 2012-03-22 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1980s, Sven Lindqvist fell into conversation with an evangelical bodybuilder while relaxing in the sauna after his weekly swim. The conversation challenged Lindqvist's view of the sport as macho and vain and individualistic and led to his first attendance at the local gym. In Bench Press, Lindqvist takes us through his own journey in the gym, but also tells us the entertaining and bizarre history of bodybuilding and meditates on what its increased popularity tells us about contemporary society.