Born to Run:A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall

This book was recommended to me by the wonderful women of book club - their collective taste has proven repeatedly excellent in the past, so when several of them said they'd enjoyed this, I put it on hold at the library.
So now both I and my husband have read this, and it was well worth the time. The biomechanical chapter was probably my favorite (second or third from the end, I think) closely followed by the chapter on evolutionary arguments (immediately following). Basically, the book is a defense of the proposition that human beings are, literally, designed for running. Not speed, as in sprinting, but endurance - long distances. Really, really long distances. That running injuries come from oversupporting the arch of the foot, leading to the dual problem of weakened muscles (anyone remember when women were mistakenly told to wear girdles all the time, to support those overworked muscles?) and insufficient motion for the foot to do what it's designed to do - capture, spread, and re-release the energy of the impact when you land on it.
There's a bit of language that eliminates this from my read-aloud list, unless you're willing to edit on the fly, which is a pity, because otherwise the writing is clear, engaging, and informative- perfect for the pre-teen/early teen who is interested in the how as well as the why of running.