The Official Release of Stronger: The Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives by Michael Joseph Gross

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The H.J. Lutcher Stark Center is honored to host the official release of Michael Joseph Gross’s new book, Stronger: The Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives, on March 11, 2025.   Described in early reviews as a “groundbreaking,” “pioneering narrative,” that “raises the question that great books do: ‘Why has this not been written before?’” Gross’s book also has a unique UT connection. His richly detailed history explores the meaning and cultural significance of strength through the lives of three academics: Stark Center founder and professor, Jan Todd; UT Kinesiology professor Charles Stocking;  and, in Australia, exercise physiologist and geriatrician Maria Fiatarone Singh of the University of Sydney. After his remarks, Gross will be joined by two special guest-s—the current World’s Strongest Man, Mitchell Hooper of Canada; and Martins Licis, former Worlds Strongest Man winner, and now producer and star of the popular online show: Strength Unknown.

A longtime Vanity Fair contributing editor, Michael Joseph Gross, has published investigative reports, essays, and books about culture, technology, politics, religion, and business. He was raised in rural Illinois and lives in New York City. His latest book, Stronger: The Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives, set to be published by Dutton on March 11, 2025, is about the central role of muscle in human life.

Mitchell Hooper is the back-to-back winner of the Arnold Strongman Classic and currently the most dominant professional strongman in the sport. A former marathoner, Hooper did undergraduate work at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, and earned a Masters in Clinical Exercise Physiology from the University of Sydney in Australia.

Martins Licis, born in Latvia and raised in Massachusetts, is the star of the Strength Unknown series on YouTube, where he visits some of the world’s most remote places to document their historical strength traditions. Adding gravitas to the show is Licis’s own deep knowledge of what it means to be strong as a winner of the Worlds Strongest Man title and the Arnold Strongman Classic.