Books for Looks

Lift Your Way to Youthful Fitness: The Comprehensive Guide to Weight Training by Jan and Terry Todd (Little, Brown & Co., $19.95).

This is a serious, no-nonsense guide to weightlifting, written by two pros (she holds the record for the heaviest weight ever officially lifted by a woman--545 pounds--and he has been a national champion in Olympic weightlifting and power lifting). In addition, the authors both work in the physical education department of the University of Texas at Austin, she as a researcher and he as a professor. Their book is straightforward and direct, without much style. But truly devoted weightlifters may not mind that or its poor-quality, snapshot-type photographs because the book contains pertinent material on aging.