Marathon Man

January 28, 2013
Rodgers’s energy—and self-regard—never flags in this bombastic sports memoir. The author was a long-distance track superstar in the 1970s; he won four Boston and four New York marathons, and in the book he recalls how his feckless existence of partying and dead-end jobs gained meaning through the discipline of 150-mile-per-week training regimens—in an era when running was an eccentricity. (Luckless opponents discovered that he would “keep pushing harder and harder, increasing the severity of your pain, until I’d annihilated your soul, your spirit, your body.”) There’s flab in Rodgers’s narrative, with its interminable step-by-step account of his 1975 Boston Marathon win, its mystic bromides—“the marathon is the essence of the unknown transforming into the known”—and its tireless recounting of accolades, from the fulsome (“the greatest runner in the world and the history of the world”) to the celestial (“ literally reached out and touched people, like God on Michelangelo’s Sistine chapel”). Still, readers with stamina will find an absorbing portrait, shaped by coauthor Shepatin, of the grueling stress and subtle strategizing of long-distance races, and of the plucky, slapdash subculture of marathoning in its salad days. Photos. Agent: Robert Wilson, Wilson Media.

March 15, 2013
Marathoner Rodgers makes clear in this engaging memoir that his rise to running greatness was a meandering path with many pit stops and detours along the way, including a period of time where he stopped running completely and became a smoker. The memoir is told in two parts, alternating between recollections of his life beginning with his college years and a detailed account of Rodgers' victorious 1975 Boston marathon, in which he set the American record. Rodgers' story is a remarkable tale of athletic triumph, and the account of how he was able to return to running will be inspiring for new runners and those returning to the sport after a long layoff. Rodgers emphasizes the hours of hard work and sacrifice that led him to the top, but, unfortunately, he sometimes crosses the line from taking pride in his accomplishments to simply boasting about them, which is definitely off-putting to the reader. Still, followers of marathons will be eager to learn the story of one of the sport's big names.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)