Every now and then a book comes along that changes the way you feel about a place or a person or a sport. The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown, released tomorrow 4th June 2013, is one of those books. In fact I’m going to stick my neck out and tell you that it’s the best non-fiction book I’ve ever read.
I confess that when my review copy arrived in the post, my heart sank a little. This is a doorstep of a book, and I expected that at best I would manage a skim read. Yet within a page I was hooked. A week later I had read every word, snatching breaks from my work to read just a few more pages and reading late into the night.
The Boys in the Boat is the true story of a bunch of rough-and-ready, working class boys who start rowing at Washington University in Seattle in their freshman year, and who end up – against the odds – winning a gold medal at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The book focuses largely on the man in the seven seat, Joe Rantz, whose extraordinary personal story explains the fierce determination required to beat all the competitors they have to face along the way.
It’s also a vivid and brilliant portrayal of 1930s America and Germany that had me rooting for Seattle and for Washington University and marvelling at how a country so deep in economic crisis, suffering one catastrophe after another, ever managed to restore itself again. Brown takes us to downtown Seattle, a city struggling to survive the Depression. He shines the light on the heart of Nazi Germany, with its monstrously deceptive propaganda that used the Olympics to deceive the outside world.
But more than that, he writes a love story to rowing – from the sleek, wooden crafts that the boys rowed to the trust and loyalty that turned a crew from just nine men in a boat into something truly sublime.
If I have one niggle, it’s that the paper quality doesn’t do the photos justice – I would have loved to have seen clearer versions of them as they lend extra insight into the dramatic sequence of events, but that’s a small point and shouldn’t put you off. Really, do buy this book – it’s brilliant.
Take a look at this video if you want to learn more:
The Boys in the Boat is available in the UK from Amazon and in the US from a variety of outlets (see the author’s website)
