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Loading... The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (2013)by Daniel James Brown
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This book was recommended to me by a friend in GoodReads. I was looking for captivating non-fiction, and this one fit the bill perfectly. It's all about the Boys in the Boat who went on to win the 8-Man Rowing competition at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. These young man captured my heart as they captured the hearts of all Americans during a dark time in history. While I was learning an awflul lot about rowing and the commitment that it takes to become a professional rower, I also was reacquainted with the entire world as it went through the Great Depression and also the world as it was during the lead-up to the Second World War. While the Boys in the Boat were trying to win championships, there were dark tidings overseas in Germany. What I wasn't aware of was that Hitler's goal in going after the Olympics for 1936 was setting the stage for the biggest "bait and switch" con ever committed. None of the participating countries were actually aware of what was going on in Germany when the Olympics were held there in 1936. I listened to this book on audiobook and found it extremely gripping. Edward Harrimann does an excellent job narrating this book. As I listened I realized that the training that young rowers go through in some of the most awful conditions, gives new meaning to the words "True Grit" . I highly recommend this book. If you are new to non-fiction it would be a good place to start as it reads like the best adventure fiction. You will come to know and love these nine young men and to cheer as loud for them as if you were at one of their regattas. Highly recommend. ( ) As a fan of all things sports, I love rooting for the underdog. And “The Boys in the Boat” by Daniel James Brown is the epitome of the underdog story. By the end, you’ll feel like you know the nine college students that made up the University of Washington’s 1936 crew team and you’ll be cheering as they row their way to victory over the Nazis at the Berlin Olympics. Joe Rantz is the heart of this story as it’s his life experiences that are woven into all the details throughout the University of Washington crew team’s journey to the Olympics. He’ll introduce you to the other boys in the boat, the sport of rowing, what life was like during the Great Depression, and how the team overcame immense obstacles in competition to become gold medalists. Before picking this book up, I knew nothing about the sport of rowing. My knowledge of the 1936 Berlin Olympics was limited to the four gold medals Jesse Owens won in track and field. Plus, all I knew about the Great Depression was what I was taught in school. The way in which “The Boys in the Boat” expanded what I knew about each is why this is one of my go-to recommendations. “The Boys in the Boat” is about beating the odds, finding hope in desperate times, and how a group of ordinary college boys trying to survive did the extraordinary. Whether you’re a sports fan or not, this is a story worth discovering more about. In this literary historical narrative, Daniel James Brown tells the story of nine young men who became national heroes during the Great Depression. They were members of the University of Washington's eight-oared rowing crew (and the coxswain) who represented the USA at the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936. These student athletes all came from working class backgrounds and they all had to struggle to make their way academically into college as well as spending countless hours practicing on Lake Washington. Brown offers a background history of all 9 members of the University of Washington crew, but focuses most deeply on Joe Rantz, the poorest of the boys. Rantz was forced to live on his own by his father and step-mother at the age of 15 and carries the feeling of abandonment to the University of Washington where he's bullied for being poor. Through the crew he finds acceptance and a sense of purpose. The book also talks about the life and career of the team's no-nonsense coach Al Ulbrickson, who had been a student rower at Washington less than a decade earlier. The poetic English boat builder George Yeomans Pocock also plays a big part in the story. Working in the loft of the Washington shell house, Pocock built wooden racing shells that were renown throughout the country, and served as a mentor for young athletes like Rantz, Starting in 1933, Rantz's freshman year, Brown details Ulbrickson's plans to form a crew that could compete in the 1936 Olympics. Collegiate rowing at the time was an extremely popular spectator sport with national radio coverage. Despite all the time they spent practicing, there were only two major annual competitions on Washington's calendar. The first was a race against their archrivals at University of California. The other was a race on the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, New York against several elite Eastern universities. Washington and Cal had only begun challenging the Eastern schools' supremacy in the 1920s. In 1936, the Washington crew teams (including JV and Freshmen) swept all of these events before also winning at the US Olympic Trials for the right to represent the country in Berlin. Throughout the book, Brown offers the parallel story of Aldolf Hitler planning to use the games to show the world that Nazi Germany was a powerful - but -benign - nation. This included deceiving the US Olympic Committee about the true severity of discrimination against German Jews when the USOC was under pressure from protestors to boycott the games in Berlin. The final chapters detail the experience of the Washington crew in Germany, including the dramatic final race. The fact that we know the team will win gold should make it anticlimatic, but since the Washington team had a habit of coming from behind to win races (while facing challenges like a deliriously sick member of the crew) makes the race descriptions exciting. Even if you know nothing about rowing, Brown describes the tactics and terminology so well that the reader is well-versed in it by the Olympic races.
In “The Boys on the Boat,” Daniel James Brown tells the astonishing story of the UW’s 1936 eight-oar varsity crew and its rise from obscurity to fame, drawing on interviews with the surviving members of the team and their diaries, journals and photographs. A writer and former writing teacher at Stanford and San Diego, Brown lives outside of Seattle, where one of his elderly neighbors harbored a history Brown never imagined: he was Joe Rantz, one of the members of the iconic UW 1936 crew. [Daniel James] Brown's book juxtaposes the coming together of the Washington crew team against the Nazis' preparations for the [1936 Berlin Olympic] Games, weaving together a history that feels both intimately personal and weighty in its larger historical implications. This book has already been bought for cinematic development, and it's easy to see why: When Brown, a Seattle-based nonfiction writer, describes a race, you feel the splash as the oars slice the water, the burning in the young men's muscles and the incredible drive that propelled these rowers to glory. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
History.
Sports & Recreations.
Nonfiction.
HTML:The #1 New York Timesbestselling story about the American Olympic rowing triumph in Nazi Germanyfrom the author of Facing the Mountain. Soon to be a major motion picture directed by George Clooney For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of timesthe improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant. It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washingtons eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. The emotional heart of the tale lies with Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not only to regain his shattered self-regard but also to find a real place for himself in the world. Drawing on the boys own journals and vivid memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, Brown has created an unforgettable portrait of an era, a celebration of a remarkable achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young mans personal quest. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)797.12The arts Recreational and performing arts Water & Aerial Sports Boating Boating by types of vesselsLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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