Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

After reading this book I almost feel like taking up running myself. This is an amazing true story of one man's search for the best way to run without injury. As a writer for Runner's World he embarks on a journey to find the elusive Tarahumara tribe who live in the Copper Canyons of Mexico and are reputed to be some of the fastest runners in the world. In the course of telling his story, the author gives some history of long distance running, and of the development of running shoes. As it turns out, the more running shoes were used, the more injuries occurred. McDougall also tells some of the science of running in an easy to read and understand way.

McDougall was able to finally run without injury as he studied and adopted the style of running learned from some of the best runners and coaches in the world. The whole idea is that people are designed to run. We don't need the shoes with the extra support. They actually work against the foot's natural running ability. There's also a sort of mystical aspect to running in which the best runners are the ones who are the most unselfish and run for the pure joy of it.

This should be a must-read for anyone who runs, but also for anyone who enjoys a tale of a fascinating life.

The Tenth Witness by Leonard Rosen

What an interesting, thought provoking book. It's the story of a young French engineer, Henri Poincare, who the 1970's has designed a dive platform for searching for a sunken ship off the coast of Germany. While there he meets and falls in love with a German woman, Liesel Kraus from a wealthy industrialist family which got its start during WWII making steel for Hitler and the Nazis. Henri is hired by Liesel's brother, Anselm, to develop a way to extricate gold from old computers, but is troubled by the murky history of the family. When his adopted uncle, who had survived a concentration camp, dies, Henri is compelled to find out the story of the past that his uncle was never able to talk about. During his exhaustive research, Henri discovers connections between the Kraus family and the Nazi war effort, though 10 witnesses, who are now strangely dying off, declared that Otto Kraus, the family patriarch, had been of great help to the Jewish slaves who worked in the mills.

Along the way Henri has questions not only about the Kraus family, but about his own ethics as well. Is the expedient thing also the right thing, or is that only something he tells himself? How Henri deals with the truths he discovers was as fascinating as the mysteries he solved.

This book is a prequel to the author's previous book, All Cry Chaos, in which Henri is an older man, working for Interpol and on the verge of retirement. I hadn't heard of this book before, but now must read it!