BEST Christopher McDougall Books & Quotes of All Time

by Arthur Worsley
M.A. Psychology, Oxford. McKinsey Alum. Founder & Editor at TAoL.

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Contents

1. Who Is Christopher McDougall?

2. The Best Christopher McDougall Books of All Time

3. More Books Like Christopher McDougall's Books

4. Best Christopher McDougall Quotes

5. Wish There Was a Faster/Easier Way?

Who Is Christopher McDougall?

Christopher McDougall (born 1962) is an American author and journalist. He is best known for his 2009 book Born to Run.

Learn more about Christopher McDougall

The Best Christopher McDougall Books of All Time

Why these best Christopher McDougall books and not others? To stay objective, I rank all my book recommendations by a combination of what’s most loved (Goodreads rating), what’s most popular (Goodreads review count) and what’s proven timlessly relevant (first publication date).

This isn’t a whimsical list. It’s a data-driven, crowdsourced collection of the best Christopher McDougall books ever published as decided by book lovers like you.

And if you think something's missing? I LOVE book recommendations so if there are any other books by Christopher McDougall that you think deserve mentioning, email me and I’ll be sure to include them in the next round of updates.

Until then, here are the best Christopher McDougall books of all time...

Best Christopher McDougall Books: Born to Run

1. Born to Run - Christopher McDougall (FREE Summary)

A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Published 2009 // 287 pages // Rated 4.3 over 185,400 reviews on Goodreads

Best Christopher McDougall Books: Running with Sherman

2. Running with Sherman - Christopher McDougall

Published 2019 // 334 pages // Rated 4.3 over 7,200 reviews on Goodreads

Best Christopher McDougall Books: Natural Born Heroes

3. Natural Born Heroes - Christopher McDougall

How a Daring Band of Misfits Mastered the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance

Published 2013 // 337 pages // Rated 3.8 over 5,300 reviews on Goodreads

See all Christopher McDougall's books on Amazon
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Best Christopher McDougall Quotes

Here are some of the best Christopher McDougall of all time...

"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running."

- Christopher McDougall, Born to Run

"You don't stop running because you get old, you get old because you stop running."

- Christopher McDougall, Born to Run

"If you don't have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ain't getting them."

- Christopher McDougall, Born to Run

"The reason we race isn't so much to beat each other,... but to be with each other."

- Christopher McDougall, Born to Run

"That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they'd never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind's first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain. And when our ancestors finally did make their first cave paintings, what were the first designs? A downward slash, lightning bolts through the bottom and middle--behold, the Running Man. Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn't live to love anything else. And like everyhing else we ove--everything we sentimentally call our 'passions' and 'desires' it's really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run. We're all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known."

- Christopher McDougall, Born to Run

"You don't have to be fast. But you'd better be fearless."

- Christopher McDougall, Born to Run

"You're tougher than you think you are, and you can do more than you think you can."

- Christopher McDougall, Born to Run

"Suffering is humbling. It pays to know how to get your butt kicked."

- Christopher McDougall, Born to Run

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