Natural Born Heroes: Mastering the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance

by Christopher McDougall

Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of Born to Run comes a book that inspires us to unleash the extraordinary potential of the human body and climb, swim, skip, throw, and jump our way to heroic feats.

"Redefines the heroic ideal, establishing heroism as a skill set rather than a virtue."—NPR Books

Christopher McDougall’s journey begins with a story of remarkable athletic prowess: On the treacherous mountains of Crete, a motley band of World War II Resistance fighters—an artist, a shepherd, and a poet—abducted a German commander from the heart of the Axis occupation.

To understand how, McDougall retraces their steps across the island that birthed Herakles and Odysseus, and discovers ancient techniques for endurance, sustenance, and natural movement that have been preserved in unique communities around the world.

His search takes us scrambling over rooftops with a Parkour crew in London, foraging for greens with a ballerina in Brooklyn, tossing heavy pieces of driftwood on a Brazilian beach with the creator of MovNat—and, finally, to our own backyards. 

“McDougall traveled to Crete to examine the physical and mental capacity of Greek war heroes [and] studied natural movement, endurance, and nutrition to understand how regular people are capable of extraordinary athletic feats.... We can all adapt the tools of the athletes featured.” —Real Simple

Look for Christopher McDougall's new book, Born to Run 2, coming in December!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307742223
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/05/2016
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	200,466
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

CHRISTOPHER MCDOUGALL is the author of Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. He began his career as an overseas correspondent for the Associated Press, covering wars in Rwanda and Angola. He now lives and writes (and runs, swims, climbs, and bear-crawls) among the Amish farms around his home in rural Pennsylvania.

Read an Excerpt

You’ve got to put yourself in the Butcher’s shoes.
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Natural Born Heroes"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Christopher McDougall.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

A mash note to physical endurance. . . . McDougall redefines the heroic ideal, establishing heroism as a skill set rather than a virtue. . . . [And] schools the reader in the art of the champion. . . . The essential narrative here, the twisty tale of a kidnapping that incredibly goes right, is exciting. It is balanced out with the journalistic account of McDougall’s entry into the world of the hero. His personal quest to ‘rewild the psyche’ might seem an awkward fit with war storytelling. But under McDougall’s sure hand the combination improbably works. Kind of like kidnapping a German general on an island swarming with Nazi troops.” —NPR Books

“Natural Born Heroes provides a blueprint of the essential ideas of how to move, what to eat, and the spirit in which to approach our everyday lives. I connected with this book on a primal, emotional, and intellectual level, and have been profoundly inspired by McDougall’s work.” —Laird Hamilton

“Fascinating. . . . Show[s] that heroism not only can be taught—it can be mastered.” —New York Post

“A fast-paced, enlightening tale of everyday heroes. . . . A victory lap for McDougall.” —Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

“McDougall traveled to Crete to examine the physical and mental capacity of Greek war heroes [and] studied natural movement, endurance, and nutrition to understand how regular people are capable of extraordinary athletic feats. . . . We can all adapt the tools of the athletes featured in McDougall’s new book.” —Real Simple

“McDougall sets his rediscovery of fitness concepts against the backdrop of a great tale of espionage, kidnapping, and harrowing escapes. . . . The fascinating story provides anecdotal proof for the theories and, perhaps, the encouragement you need to try them in your life.” —Women’s Running

“A heady confection that encompasses, among other subjects, military history, archaeology, Greek mythology, neat ways to kill a man and ideas on health and fitness that might just change your life. . . . [McDougall] constructs a fascinating edifice of ideas . . . and eventually finds a modern-day hero of his own. But the pleasures of the book are as much to do with the fascinating panoply of characters, war heroes all, British, Commonwealth and Cretan, whose exploits contributed so much to Hitler's downfall.” —The Independent (London)

“In the thoroughly absorbing Natural Born Heroes, which tracks heroism from the times of Zeus and Odysseus to the World War II bravery of a motley crew of fighters, Christopher McDougall makes it clear that . . . heroes, both ancient and modern, are not somehow supernaturally endowed after all. Indeed, they may come by their skills quite naturally. . . . His extensive knowledge of fitness training, nutrition and physiology winds artfully around a tale of superhuman resistance during the Nazi occupation of the Greek island of Crete. . . . [McDougall] solves this mystery with a witty eye for every detail, inspiring his own captive audience along the way.” — BookPage
 
“Compelling . . . engaging . . . provocative . . . with inquiries into the nature of heroism. . . . True heroism, as the ancients understood, isn’t about strength or boldness or even courage. It’s about compassion.” —Kirkus Reviews
 
“Riveting. . . . A well-done recounting of a truly heroic episode of WWII. . . . In absorbing detail, McDougall describes how . . . ‘ordinary’ men who were far from stereotypically tough, battle-hardened warriors . . . trekked across tortuous mountain terrain while avoiding a massive German dragnet.” —Booklist

From the Publisher

02/02/2015
Journalist McDougall (Born to Run) travels to the Greek island of Crete to serve up a mixture of mythic heroics and still-applicable fitness techniques. There, with amateur historian Chris White's help, he explores how, in 1944, Greek partisans and British commandos abducted Nazi Gen. Heinrich Kreipe. Further delving into the Greek resistance, McDougall offers astonishing stories about shepherds turned partisans, George "the Clown" Psychoundakis, known to run over 50 miles nightly with a 60-pound pack on his back and on a diet of nothing but boiled hay, and Costi Paterakis, who ran cross-country to shoot, from a quarter mile away, a German commander about to order a massacre. He also documents contemporary heroes like the Pennsylvania elementary school principal who singlehandedly saved her school from a machete-wielding stranger. Throughout, McDougall pauses to consider what exactly makes a hero a hero, examining history, anatomy, physiology, and fitness. This book reads as a page-turning historical account, with fitness techniques and instruction embedded throughout. Readers, regardless of their fitness levels, should come to the end feeling both inspired and a little bit winded. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

11/15/2014
Researching his triumphant Born To Run, which spent a combined 206 weeks on the New York Times best sellers list, McDougall encountered legendary ancient Greek "all-day runner" Pheidippides, which led to his investigating the long-standing techniques for endurance, natural movement, and nutrition that allowed Greek soldiers of yore to run all night through the mountains. Even if you're not planning to run all night, these techniques could do a lot for you. With a 300,000-copy first printing.

Library Journal

2015-01-21
A book beyond category attempts to engage readers on a number of levels.A less ambitious author could have focused this successfully as a World War II thriller, a nonfiction account of how a multinational band of guerrillas kidnapped a German general on the Nazi-occupied island of Crete (see Rick Stroud's Kidnap in Crete, 2015). Yet Men's Health contributing editor McDougall (Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, 2009) interweaves this narrative with inquiries into the uniqueness of Crete, the nature of heroism, the possibility that some Greek myths might have historical legitimacy ("Just because men and women of our era don't live up to the myths doesn't mean no one ever has, or will again"), a first-person, adventure-travel account of his attempt to solve the mystery by discovering the path of the kidnappers, and an indictment of the fitness industry, whose health clubs and diets that stress carb-loading might do more harm than good. There are compelling insights and provocative assertions throughout, but the narrative organization suggests a risky juggling act that sometimes seems arbitrary, and those preparing for a marathon might read it differently than World War II buffs will. Paraphrasing Plutarch, McDougall writes, "Heroes care. True heroism, as the ancients understood, isn't about strength or boldness or even courage. It's about compassion….[The hero] has to care so much about what's human, it brings out what's godly." Using examples and anecdotes spanning decades, the author shows how ordinary people can display extraordinary heroism, a quality not limited by age or gender. He suggests that in "natural training," a sense of play trumps the rigors of working out and that competition is just showing off. A mostly engaging mix of World War II history, Greek mythology, endurance training and spiritual self-help that doesn't always cohere.

Kirkus Review