navigationFifty years ago today Frank Shorter kick-started the running boom. Story
Reading/laughing my head off for the third time (over a 20 year span), historian Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals. Preview
More interesting stuff from Malcolm Gladwell on how to save high school sports. Here.
A special shout-out for our dear friend Sally, who will be 110 on 11/23. She was a Bryn Mawr classmate with mother in law Gertrude Marshall. Though mostly deaf and blind, she wants to see the monthly list. Cheers, Sally!
Favorite authors this month: Johnson, Pink, and Saroyan. And a special find, Baltasar Gracian y Morales, a brilliant, funny Jesuit, born 1601.
Madness In The Family by William Saroyan
Better Off Dead by Lee Child and Andrew Child
A Pocket Mirror For Heroes by Baltasar Gracian
When by Daniel H. Pink
The Man Who Quit Money by Mark Sundeen
The Street Philosopher And The Holy Fool by Marius Kociejowski
Fair Warning by Michael Connelly
I’ll Tell You One Thing by Dan Jenkins
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
To Sell Is Human by Daniel H. Pink
Creators by Paul Johnson
Drive by Daniel H. Pink
Every Cloak Rolled in Blood by James Lee Burke
Very Funny Ladies by Liza Donnelly
The Geography of Genius by Eric Weiner
Shadows Reel by C.J. Box
The Human Comedy by William Saroyan
My Name is Aram by William Saroyan
Days of Life and Death and Escape to the Moon by William Saroyan
Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations… by John Wooden
Heroes: From Alexander The Great…To De Gaulle by Paul Johnson
Humorists: From Hogarth to Noel Coward by Paul Johnson
Oregon Running Legend Steve Prefontaine
By Paul Clerici, The History Press, 144 pages.
A review by Don McLean
Yes, another Pre opus, and a good one. The book offers details about Prefontaine we devotees never knew. Excellent forwards are included by Bill Dellinger and Pat Tyson, Pre’s trailer roomie and UO teammate. Now 48 years since Pre’s demise, Eugene, Coos Bay, and its sister city, Choshi, Japan have updated and enhanced memorials to Pre. Because Pre was so bold, successful, and compelling, and because his early death was so reckless and sad, we grieve for him still.