Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

As the subtitle states, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand is a real life story of survival, resilience, and redemption. Louie Zamperini was a troublemaker as a child. During the 1930’s, he became an American track star and competed at the Berlin Olympics. His quest to break the four-minute mile was put on hold after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Instead of training for the next Olympic games, Louie joined the Army Air Corps as a bombardier. Louie and his crew survived several dangerous missions over the Pacific until their plane went down during a rescue mission. From a life raft in the middle of the ocean to the POW camps of Japan, this story of survival is sometimes hard to read, but always a page-turner.

This book gives us an in-depth look an exceptionally dark side of WWII. It definitely did not have many feel-good moments. However, it also shows what humans are capable of when faced with the worst of the worst. While the survival piece of Louie’s story is amazing, I also really enjoyed the parts of the story about his life before the war. Louie’s Olympic journey was quite different than how athletes experience the competition today. Overall, I’m not usually a fan of WWII stories, but I thoroughly enjoyed Unbroken.

The author includes extensive footnotes and endnotes as well as many photographs and statistics. It took her seven years to write the book, and her hard work and hours spent researching really show. Laura Hillenbrand also wrote Seabiscuit. I enjoyed the movie, but never managed to read the book. Since I enjoyed Unbroken so much, Seabiscuit is now on my “must read” list, too. 

I checked this book out as an e-book from Overdrive through HCPL. (That's why the picture I took is not great!) The library also has it available as a print book, large print book, and audio book. Amazon has it available in each of those formats as well.