Books like Running with the Kenyans

01

Born to Run

Christopher McDougall · Health

Born to Run begins as a personal injury investigation.

Both dig into running.

02

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Haruki Murakami · Memoir

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is Haruki Murakami's memoir of his life as a runner, written during training for the 2005 New York City Marathon.

Both dig into running.

03

The Sports Gene

David Epstein · Science

The Sports Gene is David Epstein's investigation into the science of athletic performance — specifically the question of how much genetics determines who becomes elite.

A kindred memoir read.

04

Can't Hurt Me

David Goggins · Memoir

Can't Hurt Me is David Goggins's memoir of escaping an abusive childhood, failing military entrance requirements, becoming a Navy SEAL, and then becoming one of the most accomplished endurance athletes in the world — not through talent or privilege but through a deliberate, painful process of forcing himself past every limit he had.

A kindred memoir read.

05

80/20 Running

Matt Fitzgerald · Health

80/20 Running is Matt Fitzgerald's evidence-based argument that the most common mistake recreational runners make is training too hard, too often.

Shares running and performance with Running with the Kenyans.

06

The Passion Paradox

Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness · Self-help

The Passion Paradox is Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness's examination of why passion — the force that drives many people toward excellence — also burns so many of them out.

Shares identity and performance with Running with the Kenyans.

07

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Dave Eggers · Memoir

Dave Eggers's debut memoir about losing both parents to cancer within five weeks and raising his younger brother Toph while trying to start a literary magazine in San Francisco in the mid-1990s arrived in 2000 with unusual self-consciousness about its own nature.

Both dig into identity.

08

Becoming

Michelle Obama · Memoir

Becoming is Michelle Obama's account of how a girl from a modest house on Chicago's South Side became one of the most recognized people in the world — and what that journey cost and revealed.

Both dig into identity.

09

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates · Memoir

Between the World and Me is a letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his teenage son, Samori, about what it means to live in a Black body in the United States.

Both dig into identity.

10

Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

Suleika Jaouad · Memoir

Suleika Jaouad was twenty-two and newly graduated, living in Paris with her first real job and a boyfriend, when she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.

Both dig into identity.

11

Boy Erased: A Memoir

Garrard Conley · Memoir

Boy Erased is Garrard Conley's memoir of attending Love in Action, a conversion therapy program in Memphis, Tennessee, in the early 2000s.

Both dig into identity.

12

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Susannah Cahalan · Memoir

Brain on Fire is Susannah Cahalan's account of the month she spent in a New York hospital in 2009, during which she experienced psychosis, paranoia, violent behavior, catatonia, and seizures — and was nearly committed to a psychiatric facility before a doctor correctly diagnosed her with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a newly described autoimmune disease in which the body attacks the brain.

Both dig into identity.