Krishna Sundarram

Born to Run


Born to Run

3 words - low quality pseudo-science.

The author sets the tone with a clickbait style paragraph (“a beautiful forest ranger who slipped out of her clothes…”) and it goes downhill from there. He has an agenda - barefoot running and he pushes with the tried and tested Malcolm Gladwell playbook - deciding a conclusion and then cherry-picking evidence to support it. According to him, barefoot running is the solution to every problem that mankind faces - physical, mental, emotional. There might be some merit to this but the author pushing it so hard leaves a bad taste in my mouth. For the record, there doesn’t appear to be conclusive evidence in favor or against barefoot running, but the author doesn’t disclose that.

His writing has a host of other issues

Almost all of the people in this book are officious, loud and annoying. Reading about them was a hard slog for me, though I’m willing to concede that this is personal taste. Others might find it bearable.

I would not recommend this book.