I picked up Meb Keflezighi's book with great anticipation. I knew a little of his story, how we moved from Eritrea to the US, his olympic marathon medal of the win at the 2009 New York Marathon.
I was hoping that in this biography written with Dick Patrick that I would learn more about what motivated Meb, his deep faith and his love for family. Unfortunately Meb chose a sports reporter rather than a biographer to help him write his life story and the result is what felt to me to be an emotionally flat book when it could have been truly inspiring.
The book lost me completely on page 17 when the story is being told of Meb's father's 225 mile trek across Eritrea to Sudan. Apparently, "The dangers were Ethipopean soldiers; animals such as hyenas and tigers..." Tigers? Really in Africa, doesn't every elementary kid learn that we find tigers in Asia and not Africa? I figured that we must be wrong, surely a native to Eritrea like Meb would know. But no, there are no tigers in Eritrea or Sudan. Poor fact checking and editing really hurt this book.
Meb is a great hero of American distance running. I hope some day a book will be written that captures the essence of who Meb is and not just what he did.
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