RUNNING WITH THE KENYANS: Passion, Adventure, and the Secrets of the Fastest People on Earth

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May 25, 2012 ARCHIVES  |  Entertainment  |  COLUMNS

Adharanand Finn
Ballantine
ISBN 978-0345528797
265 pages
$26

Reviewed by Benjamin Cheever

Every book, like every life, is a pilgrimage with one central question. Is this about the journey or the destination? The subtitle of Adharanand Finn's "Running With the Kenyans" promises "passion" and "adventure" but also "the secrets of the fastest people on earth." Are we going to wander and find enlightenment, too? Yup.

An editor at the Guardian, Finn waited until one night when the children were asleep before proposing a family outing certain to horrify their mother. An "adventure" he called it, meaning elephants and zebras - not malaria, poverty and tribal violence.

Finn's dormant passion for running had been inflamed when, on assignment for Runner's World magazine, he entered the Powderham Castle 10K near his home in Devon, England, and astonished himself with a win and a personal best. "Six months in Kenya," he told his wife, Marietta. "The kids will love it." The author, more writer than athlete, would train with "the greatest runners on earth. And if I find their secret, I can bottle it and make a fortune."

"Brilliant," said Marietta. She had a sister in Kenya, a brother in Tanzania.

And so the five Finns, two adults, two young daughters and a toddler, set their sights on the highlands above the Rift Valley. "In 2011 the top twenty fastest marathons of the year were (BEGIN ITAL)all run by Kenyans," Finn tells us. If his difficult-to-pronounce first name, Adharanand, throws you - as it did me - you should know that the author's parents were hippies and Adharanand is Sanskrit for Eternal Bliss. I don't know about bliss, but Finn is a pleasure to read. He learned of excellence early and he learned on foot. When he was 12, he broke the record for 800 meters at his school and won the 1,500-meter five minutes later.

Since then, he has slowed down along with the rest of the developed world. "Despite all the advances in training technology, nutrition and physiotherapy ... in the West we're stuck on a conveyor belt going the wrong way," he writes. In 1975, 34 marathons were run in under two hours and 20 minutes by Americans, 23 by Britons and none by Kenyans. "By 2005, however, there were 22 sub 2:20 marathon performances by Americans, 12 by Britons and a staggering (BEGIN ITAL)490(END ITAL) by Kenyans."

Energized for his adventure, Finn gets faster until he reads the best-seller "Born to Run," Christopher McDougall's investigation into the secrets of the Tarahumara Indians, great distance runners who run barefoot or in paper-thin sandals. Finn concludes that his shoes are inhibiting the natural action of his feet and tendons. He abandons the comfy shoes and heel-first style that has long been doctrine in the West. He changes his stride to mimic that of barefoot runners, and, not surprisingly, his legs hurt. He's aiming to take part in Kenya's Lewa Marathon, one of the most punishing in the world, but by the time the family bags are packed the farthest he can run is a pitiful three miles. Worse, he's distraught to see Kenyans striding comfortably in the footwear he's been struggling to do without.

The family rents a house in Iten, which lies in an area that is arguably the geographic center of long-distance running. They hire a guard, although almost everybody is kind to the Muzungus (whites). Home-grown and visiting running stars are thick on the ground. Even Joan Benoit is there with her son, Anders. She won the gold medal for the first-ever Olympic woman's marathon in 1984.

Caught in the first boom of adult-onset running fanatics during the late 1970s, I ran 60 marathons before I stopped counting. I still run at least one a year and wanted to visit the Rift Valley in the same way some Catholics want to visit the Vatican. My trip was lead by John Manners, a man who could - and should - write a book about Kenyan runners. A transplanted baseball fan, John came to Kenya with his anthropologist father when he was 12 years old, and saw the promise of the country's world dominance in running, before the world itself had any idea. He's one of the many whom Finn interviews in his quest for secrets.

The children who run to school here are fast, Finn learns, because if they're late they'll be caned. So toughness is one secret. Another is elevation - running in thin air increases the blood's ability to absorb oxygen. The doughy dish Ugali, which they make of cornmeal, may not figure in their running success, but there may be something in how little of (BEGIN ITAL)anything(END ITAL) they have to eat. They are hungry, but also hungry to win, and running is one of a very few ways to earn cash in a country without much. Rest is another secret. Lornah Kipligat, who has held several world records and operates a training center in Iten, is famous for sleeping 16 hours a day.

Finn and his newfound African friends all run the Lewa marathon, which is held in a wildlife reserve. Helicopters are used to distract the lions. He's not as fast as he had hoped, but we mustn't judge his transformation until he returns to the developed world and finishes the New York Marathon. How did he do? Well that's a secret.

Benjamin Cheever is the author of "Strides: Running Through History With an Unlikely Athlete."

Copyright 2012 Washington Post Writers Group
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BERLIN 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth

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Jun 10, 2011 ARCHIVES  |  Entertainment  |  COLUMNS

Frederick Kempe
Putnam
ISBN 978-0399157295
579 pages
$29.95

Reviewed by Alex von Tunzelmann

In 1961, a crisis brewed over the future of Berlin, which was marooned in the middle of Soviet-aligned East Germany and divided between Eastern and Western interests. To stem migration from east to west, the communists built the Berlin Wall: a stark manifestation of the Iron Curtain itself. U.S. president John F. Kennedy and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev could not find common ground. The Cold War heated up. By October 27, American and Soviet tanks were facing each other down, less than 100 yards apart.

Frederick Kempe's compelling new narrative history of the Berlin crisis puts this political story center stage. Its most memorable moments, though, are those in which Kempe reveals the unexpected slapstick of international diplomacy.

For instance, Mao Zedong scheduled a meeting with Khrushchev in a swimming pool, knowing he was a strong swimmer and Khrushchev was not. The Chinese leader performed laps around poor Comrade Nikita, who bobbed up and down unhappily in a life preserver. That says quite a lot about the personal bitterness behind the Sino-Soviet split. On the other hand, not much is revealed about the Berlin crisis by the tale of President Sukarno of Indonesia dragging Khrushchev onto a Moscow dance floor for what Kempe calls "an awkward pas de deux" -- but you would have to be actively fun-averse to want it left out of the book.

Kempe draws the personal and the political stories together in a fast-paced, dramatic narrative. He favors punchy, one-sentence paragraphs, which for full impact must be read aloud in the baritone of movie trailers. When Kennedy dismisses Khrushchev's early overtures of friendship, we learn that "it would be the first mistake of the Kennedy presidency." When a beauty queen from East Germany, then under the leadership of hardliner Walter Ulbricht, defects to the West, Kempe writes, "She was Walter Ulbricht's ultimate humiliation." When the Berlin Wall goes up, he allows himself two punchy one-sentence paragraphs in a row:

"It was a cool and clear night -- perfect for the purpose.

"Perhaps Mother Nature was a communist."

Occasionally, as in that last example, the effect of this potboiler tone is comic, but at least it's entertaining. And "Berlin1961" as a whole is certainly that.

Kempe's portraits of Khrushchev and Kennedy are convincing and mostly fair. He caricatures the Soviet leader slightly more so than the American, but he also does not pull his punches in assessing Kennedy's performance. Both men come across as well intentioned, at least on their own terms; but their personal insecurities are profound. Furthermore, their wildly differing cultural backgrounds make it difficult for them to communicate.

Kempe's blow-by-blow account of the Vienna conference of June 1961, during which the two men met for the first time, is telling-- and, in a classic sense, almost tragic. Kennedy was jumped up on amphetamines administered by a quack doctor for his back pain, which probably did little for his judgment. But neither leader came away with an accurate assessment of the other. Khrushchev saw an ailing young president in front of him and assumed that Kennedy was weak. Kennedy saw a blustering, theatrical Soviet leader in front of him and assumed that Khrushchev was crazy. Both men were trying to ensure peace by making careful but deliberate references to their nuclear deterrents. Instead, owing to errors of perception and judgment, they brought the world far closer to war.

Though most of the research here is solid, Kempe's sketchy knowledge of the issue of Cuba -- which he admits was "inextricably linked" with Berlin in the minds of Kennedy and Khrushchev -- is occasionally a limitation. At one point, he confuses the Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 with Operation Mongoose, the CIA's long-term covert campaign against Fidel Castro, begun six months later. Elsewhere, he asserts that Castro was not in the socialist camp by June 1961; yet Castro famously and very publicly declared the Cuban revolution to be socialist on April 16, 1961, on the eve of the Bay of Pigs invasion. These may be no more than bloopers, but it is too glib to state that what happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 (in a punchy one-sentence paragraph) was that "Kennedy's Berlin Crisis had moved to Cuba." Undoubtedly, the presence of missiles in Cuba had strategic relevance to Berlin. Yet Cuba had been a growing issue in and of itself since at least 1959, and for both Kennedy and Khrushchev it pulled in all sorts of regional, ideological and even personal considerations that had nothing to do with Berlin.

Nonetheless, "Berlin 1961" has more virtues than flaws. It is engaging, it is a great story, and it is generally fair-minded.

This is both an enriching history and a rollicking good read.

Alex von Tunzelmann is the author of "Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder, and the Cold War in the Caribbean."

Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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THE GEEKS SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School

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May 27, 2011 ARCHIVES  |  Entertainment  |  COLUMNS

Alexandra Robbins
Hyperion
ISBN 978-1401302023
436 pages
$25.99

Reviewed by Benjamin Nugent

Nobody gets me, and I hate my life.

How many of us, between the ages of 12 and 18, scrawled these words on our forearms with a ballpoint pen or posted them on Facebook? What could an author have said to us to persuade us things might get slightly better someday? Best-selling reporter-cum-advice-guru Alexandra Robbins offers consolation to alienated youths with a blend of nonfiction narrative and opinion journalism in "The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth."

Robbins has developed what she calls Quirk Theory -- a reiteration of a classic message in adolescent literature, at least as old as Thomas Hughes' 1857 boarding-school novel, "Tom Brown's School Days": After high school, if not by senior year, the bullied shall be first, and the bullies shall be last. She argues that the traits that cause teenagers to be ostracized by mean girls and other socially dominant types are often the virtues that help them succeed after graduation. Teachers, she says, should validate the misfits who compose the "cafeteria fringe" rather than try to make them act more like the "populars."

To provide evidence for Quirk Theory, Robbins, whose book "The Overachievers" chronicled student life at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, (Md.), follows six teenagers and one young teacher through a year of high school. In essays woven into their stories, she makes the case that the creativity and individuality displayed by her outsider subjects will make them successful later on. The protagonists are each from a different clique -- there's The Nerd, The Popular Bitch (she resolves to forsake cruelty at the end), The Gamer, The Loner and others, and at first it seems as if Robbins has managed to be present at many dramatic, private moments in their lives. But soon it becomes clear -- she never states it -- that she has creatively reconstructed events from her subject's accounts. This has the advantage of giving certain chapters the feel of episodes from a teen TV drama like "Skins" because they contain the juicy things Robbins imagines her subjects saying while they are fighting and making out. The disadvantage is that the reader must guess whether a given paragraph is actual reporting or a kind of reporting-inspired young adult fiction.

For example, friends of The Popular Bitch pressured her to cheat on her sort-of-boyfriend Luke with one of their older brothers because the brother was of higher social status. "Luke's just stoner trash," one of the friends said. Maybe Robbins was at the party, listening. But it's unlikely she was there when The Gamer, a bright gay kid from Hawaii, was verbally abused by his mother and had his first kiss. Those scenes are narrated with dialogue, just like the exchange about Luke.

In general, Robbins is a dogged, gifted reporter, but she is so preoccupied with holding the reader's attention and building the Alexandra Robbins brand that she makes dubious choices as a journalist. The book contains some compelling writing on conformity that weaves commentary by the sociologist Emile Durkheim and the writer Quentin Crisp with the stories of her teen subjects. But when she argues that outsiders are often successful in recognizable ways, she falls back on specious claims about inspirational weirdos-turned-celebrities, like Freddie Prinze Jr. and Angelina Jolie. "Fall Out Boy," she writes, "the multiplatinum, Grammy-nominated punk-pop band that has been called 'the kings of emo,' is famous for expressing emotions authentically."

Later, Robbins becomes an amateur Dr. Phil, issuing the young people challenges designed to coax them from their comfort zones. The Popular Bitch must make friends outside her Machiavellian crowd; The Band Geek must unite the outsider cliques in starting a school recycling program. Robbins recounts her dialogues with the seven subjects in a way that portrays her as a voice of wisdom. Because the title is a play on words from the Sermon on the Mount, it's hard to shake the feeling that she has cast herself as Jesus among the apostles, giving them faith to raise up the oppressed and castigate the wicked.

I wish Robbins had just observed some outsiders and given the reader a sense of their struggles -- she's a master at getting them to open up -- without inserting herself as a savior or using them as evidence for the simplistic theory that if you get meager affirmation as a kid you'll get lots of affirmation later. Wouldn't it have been more honest to say that a lonely adolescent might come to feel more appreciated as an adult or might not, but that the kind of validation that popular kids and celebrities get isn't a reason for living? Toward the end, the book feels less like a document of seven lives and the questions they raise, and more like an advertisement for a guest speaker who has all the answers.

Benjamin Nugent's first novel, tentatively titled "Good Kids," is forthcoming. He's the author of "American Nerd."

Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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