The Story of America’s Greatest Running Legend, Steve Prefontaine 

“Was he more subdued in Europe? Not when I was with him, he wasn’t.  I think maybe I saw him not subdued a few times over there.  Perhaps he was on the average more subdued, but he was definitely not subdued.” 

– Al Feuerbach, party companion

The funniest thing about this book (not a comedy but the first in our Siblings’ Book Club for 2020) was that it’s such a fast read, I didn’t catch the silliness of the above quotation until my brother pointed it out in our discussion. And it makes me wonder what else I missed.

I have never been a fan of running, I must admit. I have never been tempted to join a marathon or even a 5k, at least not since I joined the Army and faced crazy runs five days per week. Running legend Steve Prefontaine also died several years before I was even born, so for these reasons alone, I can admit that this book was not my own selection and would not have been the first biography I’d want to pick up at a bookstore. That being said, I actually did enjoy this brief look into the life of a guy killed too early, a guy whose accomplishments on the track and in the field have inspired countless other runners to push themselves to near-superhuman levels of endurance.

My brother, on the other hand, wasn’t such a fan. He likened Tom Jordan’s book to a series of low-quality Sports Illustrated articles, meatless, statistics-driven, and forgettable. In a way I agree with him, but only now, a month after the fact.

I’ve read and reviewed enough books in my time to know when a biography has a hook, and this one definitely did. The hooks for me were: “What will this legend accomplish before he dies, if not the 1976 Olympics?” and “How did Prefontaine die, and how will it impact me now as a reader and fan nearly fifty years later?” Granted, these are questions I could have easily answered following a quick visit to Wikipedia, but I’m not a “cheater reader”! In fact, as often as I review the books I read, I rarely read any reviews myself—especially before I pick up a book.

So if you’re a running fan, a sports-history fan, or an quick-biography fan of the young and famous, this book might be a good fit for you. Otherwise, you might not want to bother.

Incidentally, my other brother and I also got into a list-building activity of considering other famous young men who died violently “before their time”: James Dean, Buddy Holly, Tupac Shakur, Pat Tillman, Paul Walker, Keith Green, Payne Stewart, the rugby team from the book Alive, the entire Marshall University football team and staff of 1975—even John Denver, and now Kobe Bryant, among so many others. If this book does nothing more than get us contemplating our own mortality and thinking in terms of preparing ourselves and families for such a loss, then it’s worth the time to read.

©2019 E.T.