Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

On a superficial level, this book is entertaining and well-written, but it fails to deliver on almost every other level. As an example of creative non-fiction, the book goes well beyond acceptable stretches of the genre. For example, in his description of the Leadville race, the author seems to be in two or three places at once, describing in painstaking detail separate events that he couldn't have witnessed first hand or couldn't have even been described to him in such emotional detail by others. Many of his character descriptions seem blown out of proportion as well and at least one of the characters who participated in the Copper Canyon race has publicly declared that her character was exaggerated. On a deeper level, the content of the book is actually disturbing. It has many of the characteristics of travelogues written in the 18th and 19th centuries by white adventurers exploring the worlds of the "savages" of the day: romantic descriptions of brave and eccentric white "explorers" discovering "lost" or "hidden tribes" who in their simplicity have "noble" and "basic" truths to teach us about our lost humanity. As an anthropologist who has lived and worked in Mexico and India (I've been a runner for more than forty years as well), I recognize that there is some truth and value in our quest to learn from marginalized peoples throughout the world, however McDougall's quest among the Raramuri is superficial and unidimensional. We really learn very little about the Raramuri other than through broad and obviously fictitious characterizations of them as "super-athletes." They are depicted as totally healthy and happy largely because they are runners! These depictions ignore anthropological and public health studies of the Raramuri peoples which together present a much more complicated picture of their health and well-being. Mc Dougall's foray into evolutionary theory is actually pathetic for a lot of different reasons: (1) it assumes that contemporary foraging populations like the Raramuri are a kind of fossilized model for early humans, an assumption that anthropology ditched over a hundred years ago; (2) it assumes that the environments that drove early human evolution were uniform when, in fact, humans evolved in a variety of different environmental circumstances which would have demanded multiple food producing strategies; (3) even without these first two flawed assumptions,the Raramuri and his other primary case, the Kung Bushmen, would be the worst cases to use to draw parallels between now and then scenarios since they both were relatively recently pushed into marginal environments which might from time to time require the technique of persistence hunting. The really sad thing about this is that this book is just another example of a kind of contemporary colonialism that actually dehumanizes people like the Raramuri by portraying them in simplistic ways for the benefit of consumers of modernist culture. Mc Dougall now has a best selling book and the small fortune that accompanies it; Caballo Blanco now has a professionally-built website and offers paid guided tours of the Raramuri canyons and culture that has received glowing reports by European, Asian and American adventure tourists; the running footwear industry now has a new way to continue to make its fortune with the latest minimalist designs (that still cost over $100 despite their minimalism); and runners everywhere have embraced the self-satisfying and justifying illusion that their passion for running is natural and brings them into a symbiotic brotherhood with people like the Raramuri. And what about the Raramuri? Are they impacted positively by all of this? Or are they, once again, forgotten amidst all of the hype, marketing, and Western fantasies?