A tale of two non-historians writing history books. The first book is (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases) Malcolm Gladwell’s Bomber Mafia: A Tale of Innovation and Obsession, and the second is Christopher McDougall’s Natural Born Heroes: The Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance.
Weirdly I fell 
into the latter book by accident. I canoe, long distances. Many years ago, I was looking for new wetsuit boots, they had to be neoprene and not take up a lot of space. While googling, I stumbled across something called Vibram Five-Fingers. 
The ones in question were a neoprene upper with a thin rubber sole and they had individual toe holes, ideal for my purposes! I thought they looked great too so immediately purchased a pair.
I then got my historian head on and discovered they were for something called ‘barefoot running’ an allegedly more natural way of running that our ancestors would have used through a complete lack of footwear choice. This discovery has led to my purchase of numerous barefoot running shoes ever since.
Heavyweight reading
The concept interested me a great deal because I’m not a runner and never have been. I have been hovering over 130kgs(286lbs) for years and have always worried that such weight would lead to injury if I ran, there are also memories of hating cross country runs as a school child.
The author of Natural Born Heroes, Christopher McDougall, had previously published a book about a barefoot (nearly) running tribe, Born to Run: The hidden tribe, the ultra-runners (Superathletes according to Wikipedia), and the greatest race the world has never seen. 
McDougal is a runner as well as an author, of his four major works, three are about running in one way or another.
What I find, for want of a better word, inspiring is that this runner, who started looking at barefoot running due to injuries, went down a rabbit hole of research and ended up writing a book about the Second World War and running.
Heroes
I guess it’s hard for a book with ‘heroes’ in the title to not have hero worship in it. I guess the important thing about the heroes in this book is that they were ordinary, one example is a shepherd, and another is a baker. It goes back to something I’ve quoted before from Colditz – “What would you have done?”.
Any discussion of heroes and being heroic also brings me back to Dick Winters in Beyond Band of Brothers discussion of what one of his men had said to him (Mike Ranney): “I Treasure a remark to my grandson who asked, “Grandpa were you a hero in the war?” Grandpa said, “No…. but I served in a company of heroes”.
It also reminds me of Jeremy Clarkson’s documentary on Victoria Crosses from years ago, where he found out that only one thing links VC recipients. I will not spoil his discovery and it’s available on YouTube. Interestingly (for me) there’s also a link to my Ba dissertation in the documentary, but that’s a story for another blog.
Not House of Pain
The other reason I find this book interesting is his style of writing. For someone who jumps around between the ideas in his head, McDougal seems to write in the same way. I woke up early this morning and began to reread Natural Born Heroes. I then took the dog for a walk and carried on listening to the audiobook because it had me gripped again (I had previously read the book in 2017).
Just some of the examples of what he has ‘jumped around’ to in this morning’s ramblings (both by me, McDougall, and Matos) include the kidnap of a German general, Wing Chun, Bruce Lee and his one-inch punch, parkour, Sykes and Fairbairn, using fat as fuel, body fascia and wobbly training – and that’s all just from the first twelve chapters of well over thirty and I’ve probably missed some things too. It’s like a Wikipedia search where you click a link, then click a link on that page, then click a link on the next and so on.
Kick-Ass (Moves)
Martial arts have always fascinated me as has Bruce Lee. I did a dual-honours degree and along with history, I studied sports science. Strength and Conditioning often fight for space in my reading list with military stuff. As a marathon canoeist and coach, I was always looking for training and nutrition ideas from other endurance sports.
My background for my reading and writing now is the Tour de France which I have followed every year for as long as I remember. Many years ago, I came across a cult TV series by accomplished martial artist Chris Crudelli called Mind, Body and Kick Ass Moves, where he travels the world looking at multiple martial arts.
He subsequently wrote a book based on the series, The Way of the Warrior: Martial Arts and Fighting Skills from Around the World. 
In this tome (for some reason, Grammarly does not like this word!), he includes Parkour because: “Most martial arts do not have and set curriculum or training methodology to enhance a participant’s ability to escape, thus parkour was the answer to this need.”
As you can probably tell, I am enjoying this book and cannot wait for the next opportunity to read or listen to it, even though he believes the SOE stands for Special Operatives Executive.
Books in the pipeline
This should have been a comparison review of both books, but I seem to have gotten a little carried away with Natural Born Heroes. I finished Bomber Mafia last but I had to step back from it before I finished the review. Hopefully, when you read it, you will see why it both took so long and why I want to compare them. In addition, I mentioned marathon canoeing earlier, I also want to review books on Operation Frankton and how it all links in with today’s ramblings.