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

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. Natural Born Heroes will inspire readers to unleash the extraordinary potential of the human body and climb, swim, skip, throw, and jump their way to heroic feats.

• Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
• Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness
• The Cool Impossible: The Running Coach from Born to Run Shows How to Get the Most from Your Miles-and from Yourself
• Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
• North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail
• Running with the Kenyans: Discovering the Secrets of the Fastest People on Earth
• The Practice of Natural Movement: Reclaim Power, Health, and Freedom
• Finding Ultra, Revised and Updated Edition: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World's Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself
• What Doesn't Kill Us: How Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude, and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength
• Endure: Mind, Body and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance