buy from amazon >> Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2010: From Laura Hillenbrand, the bestselling author of
Seabiscuit, comes
Unbroken,
the inspiring true story of a man who lived through a series of
catastrophes almost too incredible to be believed. In evocative,
immediate descriptions, Hillenbrand unfurls the story of Louie
Zamperini--a juvenile delinquent-turned-Olympic runner-turned-Army hero.
During a routine search mission over the Pacific, Louie’s plane
crashed into the ocean, and what happened to him over the next three
years of his life is a story that will keep you glued to the pages,
eagerly awaiting the next turn in the story and fearing it at the same
time. You’ll cheer for the man who somehow maintained his selfhood and
humanity despite the monumental degradations he suffered, and you’ll
want to share this book with everyone you know.
--Juliet Disparte The Story of Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Eight
years ago, an old man told me a story that took my breath away. His
name was Louie Zamperini, and from the day I first spoke to him, his
almost incomprehensibly dramatic life was my obsession.
It was a horse--the subject of my first book,
Seabiscuit: An American Legend--who
led me to Louie. As I researched the Depression-era racehorse, I kept
coming across stories about Louie, a 1930s track star who endured an
amazing odyssey in World War II. I knew only a little about him then,
but I couldn’t shake him from my mind. After I finished
Seabiscuit, I tracked Louie down, called him and asked about his life. For the next hour, he had me transfixed.
Growing
up in California in the 1920s, Louie was a hellraiser, stealing
everything edible that he could carry, staging elaborate pranks, getting
in fistfights, and bedeviling the local police. But as a teenager, he
emerged as one of the greatest runners America had ever seen, competing
at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he put on a sensational performance,
crossed paths with Hitler, and stole a German flag right off the Reich
Chancellery. He was preparing for the 1940 Olympics, and closing in on
the fabled four-minute mile, when World War II began. Louie joined the
Army Air Corps, becoming a bombardier. Stationed on Oahu, he survived
harrowing combat, including an epic air battle that ended when his plane
crash-landed, some six hundred holes in its fuselage and half the crew
seriously wounded.
On a May afternoon in 1943, Louie took off on
a search mission for a lost plane. Somewhere over the Pacific, the
engines on his bomber failed. The plane plummeted into the sea, leaving
Louie and two other men stranded on a tiny raft. Drifting for weeks
and thousands of miles, they endured starvation and desperate thirst,
sharks that leapt aboard the raft, trying to drag them off, a
machine-gun attack from a Japanese bomber, and a typhoon with waves some
forty feet high. At last, they spotted an island. As they rowed
toward it, unbeknownst to them, a Japanese military boat was lurking
nearby. Louie’s journey had only just begun.
That first
conversation with Louie was a pivot point in my life. Fascinated by his
experiences, and the mystery of how a man could overcome so much, I
began a seven-year journey through his story. I found it in diaries,
letters and unpublished memoirs; in the memories of his family and
friends, fellow Olympians, former American airmen and Japanese veterans;
in forgotten papers in archives as far-flung as Oslo and Canberra.
Along the way, there were staggering surprises, and Louie’s unlikely,
inspiring story came alive for me. It is a tale of daring, defiance,
persistence, ingenuity, and the ferocious will of a man who refused to
be broken.
The culmination of my journey is my new book,
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. I hope you are as spellbound by Louie’s life as I am.
