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Imserba Webstore - Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
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List Price: $24.95
Our Price: $14.47
Your Save: $ 10.48 ( 42% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Knopf
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Brand: Liberty Mountain
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.4209721
EAN: 9780307266309
Feature: ISBN13: 9780307266309
Format: Deckle Edge
ISBN: 0307266303
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 2009-05-05
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: 2009-05-05
Studio: Knopf
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Editorial Reviews:
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Full of incredible characters, amazing athletic achievements, cutting-edge science, and, most of all, pure inspiration, Born to Run is an epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt? In search of an answer, Christopher McDougall sets off to find a tribe of the world’s greatest distance runners and learn their secrets, and in the process shows us that everything we thought we knew about running is wrong.
Isolated by the most savage terrain in North America, the reclusive Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s deadly Copper Canyons are custodians of a lost art. For centuries they have practiced techniques that allow them to run hundreds of miles without rest and chase down anything from a deer to an Olympic marathoner while enjoying every mile of it. Their superhuman talent is matched by uncanny health and serenity, leaving the Tarahumara immune to the diseases and strife that plague modern existence. With the help of Caballo Blanco, a mysterious loner who lives among the tribe, the author was able not only to uncover the secrets of the Tarahumara but also to find his own inner ultra-athlete, as he trained for the challenge of a lifetime: a fifty-mile race through the heart of Tarahumara country pitting the tribe against an odd band of Americans, including a star ultramarathoner, a beautiful young surfer, and a barefoot wonder.
With a sharp wit and wild exuberance, McDougall takes us from the high-tech science labs at Harvard to the sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks across North America, where ever-growing numbers of ultrarunners are pushing their bodies to the limit, and, finally, to the climactic race in the Copper Canyons. Born to Run is that rare book that will not only engage your mind but inspire your body when you realize that the secret to happiness is right at your feet, and that you, indeed all of us, were born to run.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: great story about running
Comment: This book will definitely motivate you to get outside and run. It's a great story with a little bit of evolutionary theory thrown in as well; such as why humans stand upright and why we can run for a hundred miles.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyable
Comment: An enjoyable to read book that never gets boring. The 50-mile race in Tarahumara county and the build up to it keep the interest high, and the information intermingled within is interesting also.
No surprise to me that people should quit spending big bucks on goofy running shoes. I am sure God knew how to make feet if we just learn how to use them properly. I have never seen any other animal on earth think they need special shoes just to run.
Anyway, it's a good book. Interesting information combined with a very good story of a special race.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Changed my life, or at least the way I run!
Comment: This book is a must read for anyone with foot pain, back pain, or knee pain who likes to exercise and or run. Not only is it helpful, but also a really interesting read. I could not put it down. The Copper Canyon Indians are fascinating people,as are all the people who run extreme marathons, and the author tells a good story. I may never run a marathon,but since reconnecting with my (bare) feet, I have no more plantar fasciitis or back pain. My workouts are once again a pleasure.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not bad...
Comment: Not a bad book however i felt the author went off on tangents for too long about things that didnt, to me, seem essential to the books purpose. I expected a interesting book about a hidden tribe and their world away from ours, however, the book talks a little about the hidden tribe, a little about science behind running, a little about marathons, a little about shoe design and a little about alot of other things.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Key to Distance Running: Forget to Stop. You Will Forget to Stop Reading this Great Cultural Study
Comment: McDougall delivers in this great pop anthropology, a worthy addition to the canon of "running lit."
At the risk of making too simple a comparison to another book based in the Americas, Born to Run delivered in a way that I felt that this year's much-heralded The Lost City of Z did not. Grann's personal connection to the story that drives Z - the doomed final Amazon journey of explorer Percy Fawcett - is strained and often devolves into extrinsic introspection and autobiography. Fawcett's mystery somehow becomes Grann's memoir and the work suffers as a whole.
By contrast, McDougall inserts himself in the story of the Tarahumara only to the extent necessary to act as conduit to their incredible story. His experiences among them resonate through his storytelling.
The book combines reflections on running - both in and outside the context of our own calcified running culture - with amateur but not amateurish anthropology. The obvious questions: (why do these people run like this?) will soon give way to the book's more insightful and unexpected questions (why do any of us run? what does our running say about our culture? what do we value? how do we express that?)
The connectedness is real. Everything is working toward the same end: revealing those common threads of human nature (both physically and socially), and exploring how culture fashions those threads into the variegated fabrics of our distinct societies.
McDougall is really working at a high level here. This great story has found its teller. Highly recommended.
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