Dean Karnazes loves to run . . . and run . . . and run. In fact, the 26.2-mile marathons that represent the pinnacle of athletic achievement for many runners are for Karnazes a typical weekend workout. (Those curious about how he fits all that mileage into a busy life might want to read his first book, the best-selling Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner.) In 2006, Karnazes took those workouts to an unprecedented, astonishing level via the Endurance 50. 50/50: Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days – and How You Too Can Achieve Super Endurance!, written with Matt Fitzgerald, is Karnazes’ recounting of the experience, plus training tips, nutrition advice and encouragement for athletes of all ability levels.

Karnazes writes that he is always seeking new challenges or, more specifically, “epic tests of endurance that sound totally impossible.” The idea for this latest endeavor popped into his head on a family vacation that, like many Karnazes family outings, included a road trip in a 27-foot RV and a long runs for the author. Three years later, in partnership with sponsor The North Face, a sports-centric retailer, it was a go: a road- and running-trip on a grand scale. The event consisted of 50 certified marathons of all types (pavement, trails, high elevation) and sizes (Karnazes ran with 38,000 runners in New York City, and just one in South Dakota) in each of the 50 states. He writes honestly about the delight and thankfulness he felt upon meeting the people who took the time to run with him – including then-governor Mike Huckabee – and about his frustrations and missteps, too.

The book includes detailed training schedules for runners interested in following in the author’s multimarathon footsteps, plus a plan for runners aiming for their very first marathon. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of 50/50, though, is that rare peek into the mindset and motivation of an extreme athlete . . . and wondering, along with him, what’s next.

Linda M. Castellitto writes (sometimes at her treadmill desk) from North Carolina.

Kudos to filmmaker/author Kris Carr for her indefatigable courage and yeehaw! humor as she shares her experience with cancer in both a documentary film (Crazy Sexy Cancer) and companion book, Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips. A spunky cancer survival manual, Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips is a practical, powerfully positive and in-your-face guide for younger women (from 20-somethings to women in their early 40s) who face a cancer diagnosis and are not about to let the C-word win.

In 2003, actress and party cowgirl Carr was feeling punk after a week of excess. She thought she’d sweat out her hangover in a yoga class; the next day she was breathless and in severe abdominal pain. A doctor’s visit revealed a rare, stage IV vascular cancer that had attacked her lungs and liver, making the latter look like Swiss cheese. Confronted with a slow-growing, apparently untreatable cancer, Carr heeded her doctor’s advice to strengthen her immune system through radical changes to diet and lifestyle. Says Carr, I quickly perked up. . . . Dr. Guru didn’t know it, but in that moment he planted the seeds for a personal revolution. Following a soulful foreword by cancer survivor/musician Sheryl Crow, eight relentlessly honest and cheerleading chapters (plus a comprehensive resource section) speak to women not as cancer victims, but as triumphant survivors. Covered are concerns from the emotional ( Holy shit! I have cancer, now what?), the nutritional and sexual ( Eat your veggies and Bandage or bondage ), to the practical ( Cancer college ). One dynamic thing that Carr did for her own healing was to form a posse, a group of women with cancer who made up her sassy support group/cancer stitch-and-bitch. Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips includes their profiles and stories and reveals the heroic and compassionate ways in which they responded to and dealt with cancer, thereby graduating from cancer babes to cancer cowgirls.

In Atul Gawande’s new book, Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, he asks: What things are health care professionals doing better, and how can they continue to improve? His first discussion involves one of the seemingly simplest methods of reducing infections in hospitals: hand washing. As he tours his hospital with an infectious disease specialist, Gawande realizes how difficult it can be for every person who enters a hospital room to wash their hands on their way in and on their way out. (Think, for instance, of how many rooms hospital workers enter each day.) Gawande is a master of setting scenes and drawing in readers with details and drama. He travels through villages in India with World Health Organization doctors on a mop-up mission to vaccinate millions of susceptible children in an area surrounding a new case of polio. In another essay, Gawande sits in on War Rounds at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, then examines how better trauma care is helping more soldiers survive life-threatening injuries. We meet a Boston physician who ended up suing his own hospital for malpractice. Gawande uses such personal stories as fodder for in-depth looks at the many facets of complicated issues such as malpractice, doctors’ salaries and more.

Gawande, a 2006 MacArthur Fellow, has a hefty resume: assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, surgeon at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, frequent essayist for The New Yorker and author of the National Book Award finalist Complications. Gawande is one of the best medical writers working today, and this book’s short afterword should be required reading for any medical student.

Alice Cary lives near Boston and is an avid fan of medical dramas of every type.

Ivy Ingram Larson was just 22 when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Determined not to let the debilitating disease rule her life, she turned to a diet of whole foods and regular exercise. The medical student and childhood friend who helped her put together the plan, Andrew Larson, soon became her husband. Together they’ve built a healthy lifestyle that has kept her MS in check and the whole family healthy.

The Gold Coast Cure’s Fitter Firmer Faster Program virtually pulses with the enthusiasm of its authors, who lay out a sensible program combining eating well and fat-burning exercise. The bulk of the book consists of meticulously explained sample workouts combining strength and cardio, accompanied by how-to photographs, and a hefty section of recipes that seem deliciously out of place in a diet book: Spice-rubbed lamb kebobs with tahini sauce? Baja fish tacos? Sounds like a diet anyone could get behind.

If exercising has turned into drudgery (and at this point, who isn’t a little sick of treadmills and free weights?), try injecting some fun into your workout with Elena Rover’s The Chelsea Piers Fitness Solution. An enormous New York City gym/sports complex with rock climbing walls, batting cages, boxing rings and skating rinks in one bustling locale, Chelsea Piers offers it all. Sounds great, you think, but I live in Santa Fe/Duluth/Seattle. What does this huge NYC gym have to do with my fitness regime? Plenty, as it turns out. Rover explains that while not everyone has access to one of the world’s largest gyms, everyone should vary his or her exercise plan to keep from becoming bored and discouraged by a stale routine. The author offers useful background information and tips on a wide variety of physical activities that should put newbies at ease as they try kayaking, snowboarding, golf or gymnastics. By detailing what kind of gear you’ll need for, say, snowshoeing or yoga, what to expect the first time you try it, and suggesting websites and books to learn more about each activity, Rover demystifies exercise and even makes it sound fun again.

<B>You’d better think</B> According to Brian Wansink, author of the fascinating, informative <B>Mindless Eating</B>, we make more than 200 decisions about eating every day. It’s no wonder Americans have such a love-hate relationship with our food.

Wansink, director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, has made a career breaking down the phenomenon of mindless eating: We ignore serving sizes even when they’re printed right on the label. We gravitate toward name brands because we assume we are getting a better product. We roll through the drive-through for French fries even though we know a banana would be an infinitely healthier snack choice.

Why do we sabotage ourselves with reckless consumption? It’s easy to blame the food industry, but Wansink doesn’t cast blame there and urges readers not to, either. (He hears regularly from food-industry reporters writing conspiracy stories such as why Pop-Tarts come two to a package if a serving size is one. Does the Kellogg’s brand want us to become helplessly hooked on their toaster pastries? No, Wansink explains. It’s a simple issue of economics: It’s cheaper for the company to package two tarts together).

Instead, Wansink puts the onus on readers to be thoughtful consumers both at the store and at the table and offers sensible ways to do just that. We may not be able to outlaw every drive-through restaurant or tax every pint of ice cream in our community, he writes, but we can re-engineer our personal food environment to help us and our families eat better.

Doctors Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz, the authors behind the phenomenally successful guide to the human body You: The Owner’s Manual, now turn their attention to nutrition in You: On a Diet. With their uncanny ability to easily explain the complexities of human biology, the good doctors present a commonsense, science-based diet and fitness plan (deemed waist management ) in their distinctive, lively way.

Roizen and Oz understand just how tough getting and staying in shape can be. When it comes to dieting, trying to whip fat with our weapon of willpower is the food equivalent to holding your breath under water, they write. You can do it for a while, but no matter how psyched up you get, at some point your body your biology forces you to the surface gasping for air. You: On a Diet mixes goofy-fun illustrations, suggested exercises and appealing recipes with in-depth explanations of everything from how your body processes food to the difference between healthy vs. bad fats. Roizen and Oz also uncover the chemistry behind emotional eating. Craving sugar, for example, may signal depression, while reaching for salty foods likely means a major case of stress. Armed with such useful information, the battle of the bulge may become a lot easier.

Actress and yoga enthusiast Mariel Hemingway will always be known as one of the famous descendants of Ernest Hemingway, but she is carving out her own niche as a proponent of healthy living. In Mariel Hemingway’s Healthy Living from the Inside Out, she shares a four-part, 30-day plan that encourages readers to clear the clutter and cut the crap with holistic lifestyle changes in four areas: food, exercise, home and silence.

While she occasionally lapses into Hollywood new-age speak you may or may not be ready to learn to stay present or consider whether your home has negative energy Hemingway offers sensible changes to transform one’s life into one a little less hectic and a little more enjoyable.

Naomi Judd is nothing if not honest. In Naomi’s Guide to Aging Gratefully, she shares her secrets for keeping family close, keeping romance alive and keeping mind and body nimble.

In spelling out her philosophies for living well, she also dishes out a fair amount of Judd family dirt. Daughters Wynonna and Ashley, famous performers in their own right, take a central role in the chapter titled, Children, Grandchildren and Parents, in which Naomi recounts the trio’s now infamous appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show and wonders, If I say something in the woods and Wy and Ashley aren’t there to hear me, am I still wrong? Still, it’s clear that for Naomi Judd, family will always come first. Judd even keeps a mom line, a phone for her daughters only, which she always answers no matter the time of day. Judd’s joie de vivre spills from every page of homespun wisdom. As she puts it, Shift happens, but her approach to aging makes it sound downright fun.

Since 1995, when he helped Oprah lose 90 pounds and train for a marathon, lifestyle coach Bob Greene has been in the media spotlight. But his crusade to help people lead healthier, fitter lives began years earlier, during his childhood, when Greene would lecture his father on his liberal use of the salt shaker. He went on to study health and exercise physiology in Delaware and Arizona, and was managing the fitness staff in a spa in Telluride, Colorado, when he had his life-changing encounter with the famous TV talk show host. "Oprah and I hit if off right away, although during our first meeting she wouldn’t look me in the eye. Despite her fame and accomplishments, Oprah felt ashamed of her weight," Greene recalls on his website. But the two soon settled into a successful routine. After a lifetime of gaining and losing large amounts of weight, Oprah reached her goal weight with Greene’s help and she’s stayed at a healthy weight for the past 10 years. He’s been a part of her life for those 10 years as well, making appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show, contributing to O magazine and even helping Oprah find the perfect Hawaiian vacation home.

In his new book, The Best Life Diet, Greene expands on the fitness philosophy he’s developed over his long career (and in his other books, including Total Body Makeover and Get With the Program!). He believes that making a commitment to gradually increase your activity level and decrease your food intake (and winnow unhealthy foods from your daily diet) is the only way to lose weight and keep it off. He discusses the reasons people overeat, including the emotional ones. For Oprah, becoming aware of and dealing with her habit of burying her emotions under plates of food was the most critical component, Greene says. The Best Life Diet suggests that if you’re in the same boat, recognizing that fact will make it easier to avoid those destructive habits.

"After working one-on-one with many clients and talking to thousands of people through the years, I think I can say with some authority that the fast and furious approach to weight loss is also the fastest route to failure," writes Greene, and his slow-but-steady strategy is both simple and effective. In Phase One, which lasts four weeks, you raise your level of activity (which is as easy as doubling the number of steps you take each day if you’re totally inactive, and exercising three times a week if you’re somewhat active), change the way you eat (three healthy meals a day plus at least one snack) and take a multivitamin. Phases Two and Three each intensify the activity level, and increase food intake to three meals and two snacks per day. Ultimately, if you skip meals, you won’t save calories, cautions Greene, since skipping meals decreases your metabolism and increases the odds that you’ll overeat when you finally get a chance at food.

The Best Life Diet includes recipes for delicious meals and snacks that won’t make you feel deprived, like Salmon and Spinach Frittata, Black Bean Chipotle Burgers, Vanilla Caramel Truffle Lattes and Hazelnut Biscotti. More recipes, exercise routines and advice can be found on the book’s companion website, thebestlife.com. To help you make smarter decisions at the supermarket, Greene has joined forces with several major food manufacturers to place the Best Life Diet seal of approval (shown on the upper right-hand corner of his book’s cover) on products he believes meet the needs of anyone trying to lose weight and eat healthfully. Though Greene is an understanding, encouraging and empathetic guide through the wilds of weight loss, he’s also adamant that his followers adhere to the high standards he sets for them. " One thing you’ll never hear from me is that making changes in your life is easy. . . . Each step you take toward your weight-loss goal is a gift you give yourself." That about sums it up.