The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
by Daniel James Brown
2013 / 418 pages
read by Edward Herrmann
rating – 9 / nonfiction history

This book has had amazing reviews at Audible as well as in the media and a friend whose reading tastes I respect recommended it  – I’m just now getting to it.

In 1935 and 1936,  while Adolph Hitler was organizing his new regime in Germany,  producing propaganda, deploying his rearmament  into tender parts of Europe,  enforcing the new Nuremberg laws, as well as secretly building future concentration camps,  and while United States and Western Europe were struggling in the depths of the Great Depression,  the University of Washington was readying its rowing team for the next season.   This book is about that team and how it was developed and trained and eventually went from being a group of  back-water boys from a relatively unknown school to winning a Gold Medal in rowing at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin – same  year Jessie Owens won the gold medal for the spring and long jump.  >>>>MORE>>>>