I'm way to young to have this much nostalgia for 60s-70s running culture, but damn they looked so cool. And no such thing as a tech tee, hydration pack, or mass-participation marathon back then, either.

This is a really neat history of when an entire track was assembled in the middle of nowhere on the CA/NV border, at the same altitude as Mexico City, to select the team for the '68 Olympics. They set four world records in relative isolation from fans or fanfare, and stayed there two more months to train for a wildly successful--and politically charged--Olympics. As many track fans will insist, the US Olympic trials is the most hype meet out there--yes, more so than the Olympics themselves. I was happy to learn from this book that Dick Fosbury agrees: "in many ways, it is more intense than the Olympic games."

I probably still wouldn't recommend this to non running fans, but it is written with a lot of empathy and sensitivity to all the historical happenings of the time, and lays out a very real, not-cheesy case for how track can make spaces that transcend all of that... damn you A.D.s and your War on Track and Field.

With no shade to Bob Burns' writing or research skills, I do still think the best part of this book is going to be all the crazy photos of a red 400m track in the middle of the mountains, with old-growth pines taking up most of the infield.