Jesse Squire of The Final Sprint website has recently put together a list of 101 top books relating to running and track. Each listed title includes a short description of the book, ideal for helping us pick the perfect volume for that runner on our Christmas list. Here are the first 10 books in the list in no particular order:

Lon, by Don Potts – Tafnews Press, 1993
A former contributing editor at Track & Field News, now deceased, Potts was an expert on the sprints. This book is an athletic biography of Lon Myers, the first American superstar of track. In the 1880s he dominated short distances from 50 yards to 1 mile, once winning four different national championship races in one day. Included in the appendices is a complete record of Myers’ career races.

The Other Shulman: A novel, by Alan Zweibel – Villard, 2006
Overweight suburbanite T.O. Shulman decides to run the New York City marathon, and the story of his life is told via flashbacks during the race. Zweibel is a former Saturday Night Live writer, and the book won the 2007 Thurber Award for humor writing. While it is laugh-out-loud funny at times, the humor serves to lighten an otherwise mostly sad tale.

Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics, by Jeremy Schaap – Mariner Books, 2007
No listing of track books could be complete without an Owens biography. I’ve read several and this is by far the best and most honest, rooting out many legends and half-truths about the man. It also tells in great detail the story of the strong but ultimately unsuccessful attempt at a US boycott of the 1936 Olympics.

The First Four Minutes, by Sir Roger Bannister – Sportsmans, 1955
The two most popular topics in all of track writing appear to be the 1936 Olympics and the first four-minute mile. Bannister’s autobiography ends with the conclusion of his historic 1954 season, when he retired from running to concentrate on medicine.

Slaying the dragon: how to turn your small steps to great feats, by Michael Johnson – HarperCollins, 1996
This might be the most straightforward self-help book ever written. What is to be accomplished is completely up to the reader; Johnson merely identifies nine fundamental steps in the achievement process and uses his own life story to illustrate how to move through them.

Pre: The Story of America’s Greatest Running Legend, Steve Prefontaine, by Tom Jordan – Rodale, 1977
Some say that the legend of Steve Prefontaine has been inflated by Nike in order to make a buck. For example, when I was in high school back in the late 80s, this book had gone out of print and hardly any teenage runners knew who he was. Yet I think the embracing of Pre by today’s generation is genuine, as his character fills a void left empty by today’s professionals. In any case, this is a fittingly honest and straightfoward telling of the Oregon star’s life, with more insight on his training than is usual for athletic biographies.

Thrown Free: How the East German Sports Machine Molded, Trained, and Broke an Olympic Hero and How He Won His Fight for Freedom, by Wolfgang Schmidt – Simon & Schuster, 1991
As athletic biographies go, this isn’t particularly outstanding in terms of writing. What it does very well is allow westerners to see what life behind the Iron Curtain was like–and it was not pleasant, even for the privileged few. Schmidt was accused of plotting to escape to the West, and ended up in jail as a political prisoner before eventually making it out of the country. The story conveys the chilling feeling of constant surveillance that was part of daily life for all East Germans, and should remind Americans why our civil liberties are worth preserving.

In The Long Run, by Bob Schul – Landfall Press, 2001
Schul remains the only American to ever win the Olympic 5000 meters. His autobiography traces his life from a farm in western Ohio, to Miami University, the US Air Force, the Los Angeles Track Club, and finally the Tokyo Olympics, all while battling severe allergies that at times threatened to kill him. I bought my copy straight from Schul himself, as you might have to too; he does not distribute it widely.

The King of Spring: The Life and Times of Peter O’Connor, by Mark Quinn, Liffey, 2005
O’Connor was an Irish long jumper who dominated his sport at the turn of the century and held the world record for over 20 years. Besides illustrating just how different track & field was then as compared to now, this book tells about the Irish nationalism of the time through the lens of sports and national teams; as strange as it seems to us now, Irish Catholics could not compete on the same clubs or at the same national championships as Protestants. Even if you don’t care one bit about field events, this is a fascinating read.

Running With the Legends: Training and Racing Insights from 21 Great Runners, by Michael Sandrock – Human Kinetics, 1996
As the title implies, 21 different legends of distance running are profiled in relatively short biographical sketches. The book weighs in at 569 pages, so that’s an average of about 27 pages per athlete, which means they go into some degree of depth. Starting with the universal favorite, Emil Zatopek, the book goes in more or less chronological order, ending with Noureddine Morceli. Besides profiling these runners as athletes, Sandrock brings out the human side in nearly all the subjects (it could be that Said Aouita just doesn’t have a human side).