THE BOYS IN THE BOAT by Daniel James Brown

Daniel James Brown is an author who describes himself as someone who writes narrative non-fiction which brings compelling historical events to life. That is exactly what he does in The Boys in the Boat. To most contemporary Americans, competitive rowing is not high on the list of sporting events to follow. Even if you have heard about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, you might only think of Jessie Owens, the black track star , who won a gold medal in the face of Hitler proclaiming his master race ideas. However, there is another story that you should know about those Olympic games .

This book tells the story of nine young men from the University of Washington who had an amazing journey that also took them to the 1936 Berlin Olympics to win a gold medal. It is about much more than their Olympic triumph. It is about what they needed to overcome and how they learned to work together in a manner which transcended the teamwork required for other sports. These young men came from farms, logging towns, and other difficult backgrounds. They struggled to get to the University of Washington and then to earn a spot on the rowing team. It is also a story about their coach, Al Ulbrickson and how he coached them and treated them as individuals and as a team. It is also about George Pocock, a boat-builder who not only built the rowing shell for the University of Washington team but also for most collegiate teams throughout the country. Pocock grew up in England and intimately understood rowing from his experience with the boats on the famous Thames River. It was his wisdom and support which sustained the University of Washington team almost as much as their esteemed coach.

Mr. Brown, the author, became interested in this subject when he had a discussion with a neighbor who was the daughter of one of these rowers. He ultimately met her father, Joe Rantz, a few years before he died. He heard this story firsthand and was able to review various documents and diaries not only of this man but of the other members of the rowing team as he was introduced to their families. The result is a book which reads like a page turning novel with events and insights into the people about whom the book was based.

There is a parallel story, which the author chooses to chronicle and which adds to the significance of the triumph of the University of Washington team at the 1936 Olympics. That is the events going on in Germany as Adolf Hitler came to power and began to oppress and ultimately murder the German Jews and others. The temporary easing up by Hitler of his cold-blooded extermination plans in order to deceive the world at his showcase Olympics, was clearly spelled out in this book.

I found the author’s discussion of the German filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, quite interesting and revealing. She was given carte blanche by Hitler to film the Olympics from every angle in order to showcase Hitler’s Germany in a glorious positive image for the entire world. She worked extremely closely with Hitler and Goebbels (the Nazi Propaganda Minister) and may have been literally in bed with them. She filmed all the athletes from the best angles, sometimes from specially built trenches so she could show the marching Germans from an upward looking view. Interestingly enough, after the American team from the University of Washington won their gold medal (in a most exciting well-described come from behind victory), she was given permission to bring her cameras into the University of Washington’s boat for a special ride with them. The results can be seen in a well-preserved video of a preliminary heat won by Germany and the final won by the US for the gold medal  (see YouTube video-English  version or German  narration version  ) where she intermixes cuts of long views of the race with close ups of the rowers. Riefenstahl subsequently tried to distance herself from her close association with Hitler after the war ( see interview with Riefenstabhl). No matter what her culpability in Hitler’s propaganda show, the wonderful video of these nine men, whose self-determination, hard work, and comradeship, was very well done and will allow future generations to enjoy watching their accomplishment.

One reviewer in Publishers Weekly called this book a Nautical Chariots of Fire, which seems a very apt description. It is also rumored that the Weinstein Brothers have optioned this book for a movie which may be soon available as you read this review. I am sure it will be an exciting film but this book alone captures a vivid picture of the Boys In The Boat that you will not forget.

The Harder They Come by T.C. Boyle

In this novel by T.C. Boyle, we are presented with a handful of people who fall on a spectrum in regard to their feelings about the United States. They are the hardworking guys who feel that the Mexicans among them are up to no good and are probably drug dealers who should be arrested. They are also people represented by one woman who feels that the US Government has made life too restrictive and that they shouldn’t be required to register their cars, get a driver’s license, and follow other laws which they believe abridge their rights. Then there was one character who has gone renegade and acts as if he still is one of the early American settlers who is battling various Indian tribes and feels that everyone is against him. This character is clearly psychotic and has lost touch with reality. Perhaps this is the point that the author is trying to make about such political views. He seems to be saying that any extreme repudiation of our form of government is “crazy” and unrealistic.

Boyle’s writing style in this book matches his hard-assed defiant view that is presented in it. It sounds like John Wayne at his toughest,  continually talking and narrating a book. It begins to feel unrealistic as nobody we know talks in this tone all the time.

The only other book which I read by this prolific author was Tortilla Curtain. In that book, he conveyed an empathetic, understanding of the undocumented Mexicans who had come across the border into California as well as the other Californians who were trying to respond to them. In this more recent book, it was more difficult to identify with the “oppressed citizens” who felt that their rights were being taken away from them. The writing style mentioned above while intense and engaging made this reader feel that he was up against a dangerous enemy which was an uncomfortable experience. It may be that that was the point of this book.

There is another dynamic here that is really quite powerful and poignant. That is the relationship between Adam, the psychotic young man who runs amuck, and his father Sten who had been a Vietnam marine. Early in the book, we see an incident where Sten and his wife are on a tour in Costa Rica where there are threatened by some thugs with a gun and a knife who want to rob them. Sten grabs one of the would-be attackers from behind and kills him in a chokehold as the others flee. This becomes a salient moment for Sten as he has to deal with the adulation he gets from the public as well his own guilt feelings. This incident also provides the readers with an insight into his mind and the struggle that he has within himself as he sees his own son developed into a dangerous threat to society. The murderous rage behavior that we see periodically in the newspapers (i.e. the suicidal pilot who brought down a plane load of innocent people) is reminiscent of these kind of feelings. How often do we contemplate the dynamics of the family of that man and the struggle that the parents must have in coming to grips with this child’s action. Boyle hits us with such insights as the beat of his writing reverberates in our minds.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration

by Isabel Wilkerson

About 50 years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation eliminating slavery in the United States, there began the Great Migration. Almost one by one “colored” people in the South would realize that they were not much better off than they were before the civil war. (I have to explain that I am comfortable using the word “colored” since I feel that it has a derogatory connotation. However, the word was used throughout most of the book since it was an acceptable descriptive word in the literature and speech during the time being described.) There were still lynchings and other types of murders of colored people in the South. This took place for no reason or for unproven accusations or insignificant acts such as a colored man talking to a white woman. The victims of this death and destruction also included children. Colored people could not sit with white people in movie theaters, restaurants, etc., and had to step into the street if confronted with a white person walking towards them on the sidewalk. These kind of situations persisted in the South into the 1960s. Even after President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Legislation in 1964, it took another 10 years, and the effects of the work of Martin Luther King and others to make the worst of this discrimination to be a fading but still not eliminated shame of our country. Many of my generation of white people raised in the North supported the civil rights movement and some were quite active in it, but I would say that most could not fully understand what it was like to grow up in the Jim Crow South.

This is the power and strength of this book. Isabel Wilkerson, while a first time author, had already won a Pulitzer Prize for her newspaper work in Chicago when she approached this subject, not only as a black woman who knew her own family history, but as a journalist who found personal stories which she would present in great depth. She spent about 15 years researching and writing this book. She interviewed about 1,200 people who participated in the Great Migration from the South to the North. It was estimated that 4 Million “colored” people ultimately migrated between World War I into the 1970s. Wilkerson not only explained and analyzed the underlying factors in great detail, but by choosing three people to highlight, she brought a living vibrant understanding to this story that is unforgettable. Ida Mae Gladney, Robert Pershing Foster, and George Swanson Starling are the names of the people that we get to follow. She got to know them in the twilight of their lives over several years and spent many hours with each of them. The result is really three separate stories, each of which could have been a fascinating novel. We get to intimately know each of them as well as their families and friends. We appreciate what it was like growing up in the South; their hopes and aspirations, and sometimes the severe limitations that were put on them. We see how these three people made their decisions to go to Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. We come to understand what happened to them and their families and as well as the next generation. Segments of their lives developed before our eyes in alternative chapters as we follow them into maturity and old age.

This book doesn’t end with the exodus from the South. There is an entire new complicated and painful realization that the reader has to face about the rest of the story. Employment and housing discrimination persisted in many places in the North, and unlike the European migrants who entered the big cities seeking a better life for themselves and their children, there were persistent obstacles for the people of the Great Migration and their children. Drugs, gangs and obstacles towards a good education for their children were constant issues.

Ms. Wilkerson has been recognized with the National Book Award as well as many other prestigious honors for this book. . It was also chosen as one of the 10 best books by the New York Times Book Review Section. This book should be mandatory reading for every American high school student. I found it painful but I’m glad that any repression that I may have had about this subject was reawakened.

Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free by Hector Tobar

If you were on this planet in 2010 when 33 miners were trapped in Chile  for 69 days, half a mile beneath the earth’s surface, you must have heard about this captivating story. During the first 19 days, they had no contact with the outside world. They only had a few days’ supply of food and the water that they found was at best contaminated. Above ground, their loved ones were gathered near the entrance of the mine and were praying and supporting the Chilean government, as they organized an unprecedented rescue operation. This involved an outpouring of assistance from all over the world. There were three separate plans to drill a hole to reach the trapped miners. There was no guarantee that they would be reached in time to save their lives. Even after one drilling operation broke through to the place where they were gathered and was pounded on by the trapped miners and painted red so the people above would know they were reached, there still was uncertainty whether they would be saved from their underground prison. Soon, food and messages were lowered to them through the small hole and they found out that the world was following their ordeal.

The 33 miners made a pact that if they survived they would all agree to tell their story in a unified way and would share any riches that would be offered to them for the details of their unusual experience. Ultimately, Pulitzer Prize-winning  author of Mexican descent, Hector Tobar, was chosen to write their story in this book. He spent untold hours speaking with the miners and their families, as well as many other people who were involved in this unusual event. Even if the reader knows all the details of the eventual outcome, this book was suspenseful and read like an adventure story which would keep the readers on the edge of their seats. One small example of the human interest that also was found throughout this book is the story of a devoted wife and a loving mistress of the same man, both of whom came to know each other as they waited and prayed for the safety of their men.

The story did not end with the emergence of the miners from the rescue capsule. It was inevitable that they would have psychological issues as a result of their ordeal. I was one of the many mental health experts who was very concerned about the sequelae that they would face (see blog). This book certainly should meet all expectations as a true to life adventure thriller. It is factual, in-depth and captures the human drama of these people. It can stand on its own, or it may be the basis for a documentary film, or a dramatic movie that should be made (or may have already been made or is in process). While I believe this book deserves all the credit that others and myself have heaped upon it, I believe there is even a better recent book of the same genre about another calamitous event. That book is titled Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink. It is about the inside story of a New Orleans Hospital isolated and with without electricity during hurricane Katrina. Both of these books are outstanding and should not be missed.

‘All the Light We Cannot See’ by Anthony Doerr.

Why does a man who was born more than 30 years after the start of World War II decide to write about the lives of a young blind girl and a German youth during this period of time where their lives ultimately intersect?And why do I, who was born just before the start of this war, find myself still seeking out books about this period of time? This is a question I cannot answer, but I do have a recommendation for the readers of this blog, which I will share at the conclusion of this review.

Marie-Laure was born in Paris and became blind at the age of six. She was the daughter of a widowed locksmith of the Natural Museum of Paris. She was very close to her father, who when war broke out fled with her to the seaside town of Saint-Malo. They lived with her great-uncle who had been traumatized by World War I and was afraid to go out in the street. She was left living with him when her father did not return from a trip to Paris.The great-uncle had a radio in his attic, to which they could listen, as well as transmit. Werner Pfennig was a German orphan who grew up in a children’s home in Berlin. He developed a fascination with and the knowledge about radio circuits, which was the skill that ultimately became his work in the Nazi Army.  There are many sub-themes in this developing story, which include the tale of a valuable blue diamond, which people believed gave special powers to those who possessed it. There also was a description of the ruthless training of the German youths and of the bravery of some of the French citizens that occurred during wartime.

Each chapter ultimately alternated between the lives of the blind French girl and the young German lad, as well as a few other people. It should not be surprising to learn that this book is very well-written and well-received. It received a National Book Award and was on the ‘New York Times’ bestseller list for 38 weeks. By examining the microcosm of these two persons’ lives the reader gets a feeling of the humanity, or the lack of it, of some of the people who lived and died during this horrendous recent history. As well-written as this book may be, it is really still a figment of the imagination of the talented Mr. Doerr. It is a fine piece of literature that could round out a reading list for the contemporary reader. However, if you are a young person wishing to be educated on this dark period of 20th Century history or even an older person who has not previously explored this era, this book may not be the place to start. I would suggest two other books; one a classic and the other one probably read by very few people. If you have not read it, I suggest that you read ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ by Anne Frank, which is the memoir of a young girl in Holland during the Nazi occupation. This perhaps is the most well-known and well-received book about this period of time. The other book that I would suggest is ‘How We Survived – 52 Personal Stories by Child Survivors of the Holocaust’ (See my review of this book). This is a vivid, valid and authentic group of short vignettes that will hold your attention and tell a story as informative and moving as the fine novel which I just reviewed.There are also some other recent novels about the Holocaust that I would bring to your attention: ‘Once We Were Brothers’ by Ronald Balson, ‘My Sister’s Keeper’ by Jodi Picoult and ‘The Book Thief’ by Markus Zusak.( see my reviews of these books) This is obviously a topic that can be explored with many fine pieces of literature, and this book by Mr. Doerr is a very good addition to this library of books.

The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson- This book reminded me of the many science fiction stories I read as a teenager. To me it felt as if we were learning about life on an alien planet. In this society, there is no kind of a stable life style or comfortable relationships. People can be whisked away, to do some work detail, sometimes never to return. If a wife has her husband taken away she might be assigned a substitute husband. On this planet children’s values come from loudspeakers that tell fables or bizarre truth or near truth all the time. Since there is no pretense that this is life on another planet, the reader might try to put it in prospective of something we have known about. Is this a version of the Holocaust where one group of people were completely devalued and then attempts made to ship them off and kill them all? However, here there isn’t one group of people that is subject to annihilation, it can be just about anyone. “ 1984” and Big Brother come to mind but we don’t have to think about a futuristic society because we are already told we are talking about North Korea and the way its rulers or should I say “Ruler” controls everyone’s life. In fact one of the central characters is Kim Jon II,, himself (referred to as “ Dear Leader”), the recently deceased leader of that country who is the father of the actual leader today Kim Jung Un. So if we take the story at face value are we being told the behind the scenes horrible life of the people who live in North Korea? Apparently the truth is that it is very difficult to be confident about what goes on in North Korea today. Adam Johnson, the author has visited the country and tried to speak with people who live there but who usually won’t speak to outsiders. He has told of interviews that he has had with defectors who have come over to “our side.” Johnson himself in interviews has admitted that much of the horrors in his book , he has made up although founded, no doubt ,on the stories he has read and things he has seen. Living in captivity, without descent food, eating flowers, having no toilet, being tortured by the “ autopilot “and ultimately becoming inhuman is apparently not an unusual story. The book is written well and the shifts in time and person as one character inhabits another character are challenging to follow but does help to take us to a deeper reveal of this horrible society that we are being told about. I have tried to understand the awarding of the Pulitzer Prize for this book and perhaps it was for the unique journey that the author chose to take us on. All the details can’t be accurate but the depiction probably is and thus Mr. Johnson has moved the curtain to show us one of the truly tyrannical societies that exists today.