The Boys in the 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.