The Boys in the Boat

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.

I've had a copy of this book sitting on my shelf for several years. Who would want to read about rowers? I thought.

Now that I have listened to this audiobook, I have a different answer to that question. Me. And everyone else.

The Boys in the Boat is the story of nine young men, all from impoverished backgrounds in the American West during the Great Depression, who, despite everything placed in their path to thwart them from their goal, manage to win the gold at the 1936 Olympics.

I'm not a sports person, but I loved this book.

The author definitely hurt this 5-star story with his 3-star editing. There was way way way too much detail and it seemed like he was scared to take out any little detail that he found. I listened to a few chapters on the audiobook and it was lots easier to get through. But, even being too detailed, he crushed the writing on the action scenes and really made me feel the drama and excitement of it all. I'm excited to see how the movie lives up to this!

Also, listening to a race scene while running, hearing the stroke rates, super inspiring. I could've sprinted forever.

Age range: 15+
Being dense and nonfiction, this would probably be too tough for younger readers. But the content didn't have any red flags.

Excellent! Beautifully written.

Really enjoyed this story about a rowing team who would go on to win gold at the Olympics in Berlin. There were just a few swears, but mostly it's a clean story that focuses on the young men who trained to take the USA to victory in a country already falling prey to Hitler's aims. The backdrop of an increasingly militant nation, using the Olympics as a public display for political reasons, was very interesting.