Running in Borrowed Shoes

Running in Borrowed Shoes gives an interesting account of the experiences of American Olympic athletes while representing their country abroad in the 1950's. I found the text vividly written as well as thoroughly researched and richly documented. This is perhaps the most comprehensive account we have seen about the Helsinki Olympic Games seen through the eyes of a foreign athlete.

Vesa Tikander, Special Researcher, Sports Museum of Finland, Helsinki

Running in Borrowed Shoes is finely textured with the sense of what it was like to grow up during those trying years of Depression and war, and how friendships and community nevertheless provided hope and inspiration. Lovingly recreated by Catherine Baker Nicholson and carefully vetted by Thane Baker himself, this book provides rich detail from an archive of memorabilia, contemporaneous news accounts, interviews with surviving Olympians from the 1952 team and with descendants of Olympians now deceased.

Beautifully written and carefully documented . . . I found much here to admire and to enjoy.

Teresa Sullivan, President Emerita and Professor, University of Virginia