"The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics"
Daniel James Brown’s The Boys in the Boat is a great book. He intertwines the events of the times with the story of these mostly poor young men. It is well researched using primary sources and well told so that it reads almost like a novel. The characters and the action take on true life.
It was tough all over with the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and the rumblings of Germany gearing up for war again. These men had their own personal battles to fight to stay in school at Washington University and on the 8+1 man crew. In the end they overcome their personal battles becoming one in the boat to find their swing. (you’ll have to read the book to find out what swing is).
Along the way you get to met George Pocock a British expat master shell builder, the coach Al Ulbrickson and especially Joe Rantz, a young man who never let anyone get close to him but found himself as the crew was transformed into one organism.
In one way it is the story of unlikely athletes finding themselves on the world stage who “thumb their noses” at Hitler and his NAZI Germany, but it is really the story of individuals discovering that they are a gestalt. Together they are greater than the sum of each other, something they carried throughout the rest of their lives.
I can’t say enough about this book. Read it if you are interested in crew racing or the history of the 1st half of the 20th century or just because you need a view of what it is that makes us as a country stand out to the world. Not always perfect but often inspiring.
https://www.amazon.com/Boys-Boat-Americans-Berlin-Olympics-ebook/dp/B00AEBETU2/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1478432013&sr=1-1&keywords=the+boys+in+the+boat
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