The Runner tells the remarkable true story of a drifter and petty thief named James Hogue who woke up one cold winter morning in a storage shed in Utah and decided to start his life anew. Re-imagining himself as a self-educated ranch hand named Alexi Indris-Santana who read Plato under the stars and could run a mile in under four minutes, Hogue applied and was accepted to Princeton University, where he excelled academically, made the track team, became a member of the elite Ivy Club, and dated a millionaire's daughter. Echoing both The Great Gatsby and The Talented Mr. Ripley, the story of Hogue's life before and after he went to Princeton is both an immensely affecting portrait of a dreamer and a striking indictment of the Ivy League meritocracy to which Hogue wanted so badly to belong. Drawing elegant parallels between Hogue's ambitions and the American myth of self-invention, while also examining his own uneasy identification with his troubled subject, author David Samuels has fashioned a powerful metaphor for the corruptions of the American dream, revealing his exceptional gifts as a reporter and literary stylist.