Review of Dean Karnazes’s “The Road to Sparta”
Dean Karnazes’s The Road to Sparta is equal parts history lesson, philosophy essay, and memoir. The book tells two stories. Dean Karnazes’s own journey back to the homeland of his forebears – Greece. And the tale of Pheidippides, the messenger who ran more than 300 miles to effectively save Western Civilization, when the Athenians dispatched Pheidippides to Sparta (approximately 140 miles away) in order to secure Spartan aid in defending against Persian invaders at Marathon. Pheidippides’s run from Athens to Sparta is the catalyst that is memorialized in the modern-day Spartathalon. In The Road to Sparta, Karnazes recounts not only his experience running...
