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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Reveals how we can all surpass our perceived physical limits. --Adam Grant

Limits are an illusion: a revolutionary book that reveals the secrets of accessing your hidden extra potential

Foreword by Malcolm Gladwell

The capacity to endure is the key trait that underlies great performance in virtually every field--from a 100-meter sprint to a 100-mile ultramarathon, from summiting Everest to acing final exams or completing any difficult project. But what if we all can go farther, push harder, and achieve more than we think we're capable of?

Blending cutting-edge science and gripping storytelling in the spirit of Malcolm Gladwell--who contributes the book's foreword--award-winning journalist Alex Hutchinson reveals that a wave of paradigm-altering research over the past decade suggests the seemingly physical barriers you encounter as set as much by your brain as by your body. This means the mind is the new frontier of endurance--and that the horizons of performance are much more elastic than we once thought.

But, of course, it's not "all in your head." For each of the physical limits that Hutchinson explores--pain, muscle, oxygen, heat, thirst, fuel--he carefully disentangles the delicate interplay of mind and body by telling the riveting stories of men and women who've pushed their own limits in extraordinary ways.

The longtime "Sweat Science" columnist for Outside and Runner's World, Hutchinson, a former national-team long-distance runner and Cambridge-trained physicist, was one of only two reporters granted access to Nike's top-secret training project to break the two-hour marathon barrier, an extreme quest he traces throughout the book. But the lessons he draws from shadowing elite athletes and from traveling to high-tech labs around the world are surprisingly universal. Endurance, Hutchinson writes, is "the struggle to continue against a mounting desire to stop"--and we're always capable of pushing a little farther.

Alex Hutchinson, Ph.D., is a columnist for Outside magazine and was a long-time columnist for Runner's World. A National Magazine Award winner, he is a regular contributor to The New Yorker online, pens the weekly Jockology column in the Toronto Globe and Mail, and writes for the New York Times. FiveThirtyEight recently named him one of their favorite running science geeks. He was a two-time finalist in the 1,500 meters at the Canadian Olympic Trials, and represented Canada internationally in track, cross-country, road racing, and mountain running competitions. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cambridge, and has worked as a researcher for the U.S. National Security Agency. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer with the New Yorker since 1996. He is a former writer at the Washington Post and served as the newspaper's New York City bureau chief. He has won a National Magazine Award, and in 2005 he was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People. He is the author of four books: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference, Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking, and Outliers: The Story of Success, all of which were #1 New York Times bestsellers. His book What the Dog Saw is a compilation of stories published in the New Yorker. Gladwell graduated from the University of Toronto, Trinity College, with a degree in history. He was born in England, grew up in rural Ontario, and now lives in New York City.

Robert G. Slade has been a professional actor for nearly thirty years, performing in film, television, radio, and stage work. He appeared in Casino Royale in 2006. He has spent much of his professional life in Canada but has been appearing across the UK in all media since moving to London in 2005.