Charles Atlas (1893-1972) embodied the nineteenth-century ideal of the self-made man--a dream of self-improvement and rapid transformation that began with a strengthened, healthy body. By 1942, more than 400,000 copies of the Atlas program of self-development had been sold.

According to published accounts, Atlas was born Angelo Siciliano on October 30, 1893, near Acri, in Calabria, Italy. He came to the United States in 1903 with his father, Santo Siciliano, a farmer, who soon returned to Italy. His mother, Teresa, a devout Roman Catholic, raised him in a waterfront section of Brooklyn, New York, while working as a seamstress in a sweatshop. However, Santo Siciliano's naturalization papers state that Angelo was born April 20, 1893, in Brooklyn, New York. They suggest that he lived much of his childhood with his father. Lacking interest in his studies, Angelo left high school in 1908, taking a job as a leather worker in a factory that made women's pocketbooks...