The Boys in the Boat
Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Ratings52
Average rating4.5
15
Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
Ratings52
Average rating4.5
Daniel James Brown’s robust book tells the story of the University of Washington’s 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic quest for an Olympic gold medal, a team that transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the boys defeated elite rivals first from eastern and British universities and finally the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the Olympic games in Berlin, 1936. The emotional heart of the story lies with one rower, Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not for glory, but to regain his shattered self-regard and to find a place he can call home. The crew is assembled by an enigmatic coach and mentored by a visionary, eccentric British boat builder, but it is their trust in each other that makes them a victorious team. They remind the country of what can be done when everyone quite literally pulls together—a perfect melding of commitment, determination, and optimism. Drawing on the boys’ own diaries and journals, their photos and memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, The Boys in the Boat is an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate story of nine working-class boys from the American west who, in the depths of the Great Depression, showed the world what true grit really meant. It will appeal to readers of Erik Larson, Timothy Egan, James Bradley, and David Halberstam's The Amateurs.
Featured Series
1 released bookThe Boys in The Boat is a 2-book series first released in 2013 with contributions by Daniel James Brown.
Reviews with the most likes.
I enjoyed this book enough that I stayed up until almost 3:00 a.m. to finish it. As usual in books like this there was a ton of really interesting info about how people got on on a day-to-day basis (e.g. how did people of modest means who really wanted a college education afford it? They worked. Constantly. All day every day. How the protagonist of this book did not drop dead of exhaustion at age 18 will be an enduring mystery to me.)
You know that any type of book that discusses sport is going to get on to “flow” eventually, and this book really stands out in explaining the mental work of rowing in a way that made me want to go find a scull somewhere and learn to row.
The descriptions of rowing in this book make me feel like I am back in a boat.
History is as much about what you don't write as what you do. Because of the legitimately incomprehensible entangling of stores and narratives, you have to choose a place to start, decide on a place to end and define the boundaries along the way. The Boys in the Boat does a brilliant job of this, despite the notable handicap of dealing with history's most unexplainable character, Adolf Hitler.
The book is mostly the story of one man, Joe Rantz, whom the author (Daniel James Brown) met in the last few months of Rantz's life, though it does weave the story of the other men in the crew throughout as well.
Rantz alone would provide one hell of a compelling narrative on his own, though — born to a gifted, hardscrabble mechanic who buried two wives before Rantz graduated college, Rantz embodied the epitome of the self-sustaining man. He joined the crew team because he thought it would allow him to attain a personal goal (have enough money to graduate). He learned how to subsume his own desires into the team's, to strive for the mystical rowing notion of “swing,” all rowers in perfect harmony. (A side-effect of the book: I now feel like I know as much about the sport as a JV member of the crew myself, though obviously that's not enough.)
Gliding through some of the more tumultuous years of American history, Brown does a masterful job of giving just enough historical background to render the story more relatable and comprehendible. With skillful suspense, Brown kept bringing me to the point of active rooting for a team during a race that ended more than eight decades ago. Don't even think about putting it down once you get to junior year — it'll require a solid sprint to the end.
I'm not big on “American sports team demonstrates the superiority of American society by beating sports team of fascist/communist country” stories, but I enjoyed this book. It focuses on the personal stories of a few of the characters while giving a really interesting social history of the sport of rowing. It delves a bit into the concern some Americans felt about participating in the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the propaganda machine that Germany put in place to present themselves in a good light to the rest of the world. A more prominent focus of this book, though, is the assumption that most people had that the best rowing teams were elite, Eastern sons of bankers and senators, and the condescension that the Washington team faced as Western sons of fisherman, farmers and lumberjacks. Even though I knew the conclusion of the story, the journey to get there was gripping.
