BORN TO RUN

By Christopher McDougall (Alfred A. Knopf, 282 pages, $24.95)

No doubt endurance athletes and adventure travelers will enjoy "Born to Run." Christopher McDougall's book, subtitled "A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen," lets us mortals into the lives of ultra-marathon runners and the reclusive Tarahumara Indians, who reside and run in Mexico's Copper Canyons.

A runner and former Associated Press reporter, McDougall is an informative narrator and chooses his moments to infuse his opinion with edge. Featured prominently is Scott Jurek, the "ultra god." He wasn't a star until he left Proctor, Minn., where his pals called him "Jerker."

How Jurek considered the Tarahumara Indians his idols before his meeting with them is chronicled in the book. He said he often repeated a saying of theirs as inspiration: "When you run on the earth and run with the earth, you can run forever."

ROCHELLE OLSON, NEWS REPORTER

THE LONG SNAPPER

By Jeffrey Marx (HarperOne, 245 pages, $24.99)

Why would anyone want to write a story about a long snapper, a person who pitches a football backwards between his legs to someone else for -- at most -- a few plays each game? A job which, if done correctly, no one notices?

That's the task Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Marx set out to do, and for the most part he succeeds. His long snapper is Brian Kinchen, who had played professional football for 13 years but had been out of it for a while when he got the call in December 2003 to try out for the New England Patriots, the team that would go on to win that year's Super Bowl.

The Patriots' regular long snapper was injured, and they needed a fill-in. Kinchen gets the job and his adventure begins. Marx astutely chronicles Kinchen's journey, giving us a look at the inner workings of a pro football team as it pushes for a championship. We get glimpses of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, the Patriots' star quarterback and coach. We see how Kinchen's high-profile job affects his family and his day job as a teacher.

And we see how the experience affects Kinchen himself as he discovers a lot more about himself and his relationship with football than he had bargained for.

MILFORD REID, SPORTS DESIGNER