Better Than Volume I – Joe Roark

Randy Roach’s newest book, ‘Muscle, Smoke and Mirrors’ vol 2, is, in my view, even better than vol 1 which was in itself exquisite!

There are authors who can write contest reports, others who handle facts well, others who write good fiction (even though they think they are writing facts). But there is not another Randy Roach. Fielding statements from literally dozens of major and minor sources, he appraises them by what must have been a temendous task of study and comparison, places them in logical order and importance, then weaves all that into an interesting, well-written, readable storyline. The grunt work of reverse-blending all that information is horrendous in its difficulty, but Roach makes it appear as though he is chatting with a single source, who had done all this before- but NO ONE had!

Several key players in iron history, each standing with a cog-wheel of information are orderly interlocked so that the whole seems to become more than the sum of its parts, as though there is bonus knowledge when the tale is so well formatted and revealed. An avalanche of information awaits the careful reader of this sparkling and splenid masterpiece of ironhistory. Anyone not reading this book must consider himself minus some very
skeleton-key ingredients in the overall scenario in the topics it covers from Arnold to Arthur Jones and the machinations of the exercise machine wars.

– Joe Roark
Former IFBB Historian
www.ironhistory.com