“Highly recommended!” (Samuel Hawley, author of Speed The Inside Story of the Land Speed Record in the Sixties and I Just Percy Williams, World’s Fastest Human) Before Usaine Bolt, before Carl Lewis, before Ben Johnson and Bob Hayes and Jessie Owens...there was Charley Paddock. Back in the 1920s Paddock epitomized speed on the track, and he did so with a flamboyance that made him a star. Fans loved him for the shows he put on, and sportswriters for the stories he created and the controversies he stirred up. For most of the decade he was known as the “Fastest Human.” The Fastest Human is Charley Paddock’s own story, from his earliest childhood through his training as a sprinter and rise to track stardom. First published in 1932 and now reissued by the Paddock Family Estate, it conveys the drama, the passion and the humor of elite training and competition and is peopled with many of the sprint giants of the day, names like Jackson Scholz, Lorne Murchison, Frank Wykoff, Percy Williams, Harold Abrahams, and more. At the core of the narrative are the 1920, 1924 and 1928 Olympic Games in which Paddock competed, winning a total of two gold and two silver medals. The drama depicted in the Oscar-winning 1981 film Chariots of Fire is here, when Paddock ran in the 100 and 200 meters against the likes of Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell of Great Britain and fellow American Jackson Scholz. Paddock also expounds on his techniques of sprinting, reveals his run-ins with the Amateur Athletic Union that governed amateur athletics, and recounts his experiences traveling and racing around the world. Paddock ( "The California Flash!") and his peers did old-school running on cinders. Starting blocks? Not allowed; sprinters dug holes in the track. Electronic timing devices? Not yet invented; officials used handheld stopwatches. Pampered athletes? Not even close. Paddock exposes the squalid conditions US Olympians had to endure en route to the 1920 Antwerp Games. The Fastest Human is a fascinating window on a bygone age of track competition, by the man who set the standard for the amateur athletic star.