Monday, January 6, 2014

Booktalks


     Why We Run by Bernd Heinrich is a kind of ultimate science/sport book. Heinrich, a renown scientist and naturalist (and author of Winter World), recounts his preparation for competing in a 100 kilometer ultra-running event by illustrating that humans deserve to stand among the elite distance runners in the animal kingdom.

    In fact, his physical and mental preparation - everything from stride-length, breathing mechanics, and diet depletion - is supported and informed by his studies of the natural world; the way that camels stay cool or the way birds gorge for migration. Even the “singing” pattern of frogs and the digestive secrets of bees are aligned and applied to his long term race training and strategies.

    His awe of the natural world is matched by his deep love of running. He quotes great runners as often as he does scientific papers, but it is the way he stitches science to the sport that reveals the beauty of the scientific mind. He is at once a driven athlete and a methodical pursuer of the unknown... not to mention a lucid and inspired writer.

    His personal story alone would be a moving memoir. That he shares the stage with the vast company of life-forms that have framed his quest is what makes this read a revelation as well as an inspiration.






    This is a tough book. The subject matter is relentless, but the author’s tenacity to capture dignity within distress triumphs. It is the story of the hard-nosed Americans who stayed in “No-Man’s-Land” during the Dust Bowl era.

    Theirs is not a story of ultimate success in the face of adversity, rather it is for us, the revelation of the power of the American dream; to own and work and keep a place of one’s own. Beginning with nothing and looking for not much more, the personal journeys of a dozen people are drawn with realism and respect by Egan. The physical hardship and mental anguish that crippled most of them is painstakenly recounted, year on year. And yet, we root for them even as their modest hopes are buried by a natural world out of control.

    How that compromised corner of America deteriorated from millions of acres of waist-deep prairie to barren soil is laid before us with clarity. It is a story of deception, the lure of the fast-buck, and the back-door pitfalls of capitalism. Ultimately, however, it is a book of personal lives that illustrate an era more powerfully that statistics or the famous; lives as heroic, if desperate, as any in history.

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