If you flip through your family album, you’ll likely see your forefathers’ facial hair appear and vanish like leaves in one of those time-lapse nature documentaries. Flip-flops in facial-hair fashion date to 30,000 BCE, when our prehistoric ancestors first tried shaving with flint blades; little wonder many gave up and […]

The postwar spread of television made possible the career of the most notable competitor to Charles Atlas, François Henri “Jack” LaLanne. Like Macfadden, LaLanne was a reformed physical wreck who decided “physical culture and nutrition is the salvation of America.” He’d opened a pioneering gym in Oakland in 1936 at […]