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Alex Hutchinson had a problem. An enviable problem, it would seem, given that just a few years earlier his Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, with a foreword by Malcolm Gladwell, had found its way onto the bestseller lists and “positioned me perfectly to brand myself as ‘the science of endurance guy’ and milk that role for the rest of my working life.”

Can you hear dissatisfaction in those words? Hutchinson’s confident, lucid reporting on the latest developments in studies of physical achievement and human performance had long commanded admiration from inquisitive sports scientists, fitness obsessives, and business gurus looking for a competitive edge. Fellow journalists like Gladwell, compelled to explain the complexities of cutting-edge research in everyday language, could barely contain their envy at Hutchinson’s range of skills. Not only had he earned a PhD in condensed matter physics from Cambridge’s renowned...