I haven't read Born to Run, so I cannot compare. Most of the book was a very interesting World War 2 story in Crete and some interesting other stories and characters were introduced on the side. The thing is, that the ideas that were to be the take home from this book were kind of loosely tied to the stories and the structure of the book was a bit messy jumping from one subject to another. Interesting subjects but too many of them poured inside one book.