Daniel James BrownRecensioni

Compelling, interesting, and well-written. The jusxtoposition of the boys training and the building of a lie in Germany is fascinating. The Nazi propoganda machine is disturbingly contemporary, but the boys from Washington are utterly likeable throughout their journey.

As someone who live in Reno, I’ve been to Donner Lake, driven over Donner Summit, and been to Donner Memorial State Park. But all I really knew about the Donner Party beforehand was that they’d gotten stuck up in the Sierras and had to turn to cannibalism to survive. This book was informative and very well-written, but also the word “harrowing” in the book’s subtitle is there for a reason…Brown really immerses you in the world and experiences of the party and parts of it are incredibly hard to read. It’s very good, but it’s nightmare fuel.

Years ago, an author I respect greatly recommended this on social media. Unknown to one another, both she and I were reading Donner Party books at the same time. Eagerly, I placed an ebook on hold and was delighted to read a sample. I was disheartened to find out that I considered the writing style annoying, canceled the hold and that was that. Fast forward to now, I wanted to know if I would have the same opinion. I did not, and I even finished the book and decided to review it. I expected something different than I got the first time. Now, I remembered the style it was written and that helped my reading experience a lot. It's jarring to go from vividly written word about the past, right into making modern-day comparisons in the next paragraph. The author does that a lot. It's the style in which the book is written. I never got used to it, but I was on the lookout, as it were. I appreciated the efforts to draw the audience in. The level of detail drew me in. I'm glad the author did so much work to write this. I'm glad I was able to finish the book on second read.

Digital audiobook narrated by Michael Prichard

Subtitle: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride

Brown looks at the events that led to and resulted from the infamous Donner Party trapped in a blizzard in the mountains near present day Lake Tahoe. I think that most people today have at least heard of the Donner Party, and for most of us the single thing we remember is their descent into cannibalism, but Brown gives us a more complete picture. We learn of their goals, hopes, and dreams, of their preparations and survival skills. We also learn about their mistakes and disagreements.

He chose to focus on one particular young woman, Sarah Graves, who was a 21-year-old newlywed when the group, which included her new husband, her parents and younger siblings, set out from Illinois bound for California, and who survived the ordeal. Brown did extensive research, interviewing descendants, pouring over historical reports, and actually replicating parts of the journey so that he could get a real sense of walking through waist-high fields of prairie grasses, experience the blinding whiteness of walking across salt flats in summer, feel the bitter wind of a snowstorm in the mountains. This made the tale more personal, even visceral, and helped this reader feel connected to Sarah and the entire Donner party.

Michael Prichard does a marvelous job of performing the audiobook. Nonfiction – even narrative nonfiction – can be dry at times but his delivery kept me engaged and interested in hearing the story.

The tragedy of the Donner Party of 1846 has been told numerous times in varying degrees of research and detail. In this 2010 version, Brown opts to narrate this disaster and survival story from the perspective of Sarah Graves, a new bride traveling west with her family and her new husband. They make the catastrophic choice to join up with another trail party whose fate would still be remembered with a shudder more than 150 years later.

Brown has presented a thoroughly researched, balanced and well-written portrayal of the circumstances, personalities, decisions and aftermath. It's funny — this is the fourth Donner Party narrative I've read now, and in each instance there has been a fanciful part of my brain that feels hopeful that *this time* they will make different choices that lead to a less tragic outcome. Alas, that never happens. I do feel rather an expert now on the subject, though.

This book was recommended to me by a friend in GoodReads. I was looking for captivating non-fiction, and this one fit the bill perfectly. It's all about the Boys in the Boat who went on to win the 8-Man Rowing competition at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. These young man captured my heart as they captured the hearts of all Americans during a dark time in history. While I was learning an awflul lot about rowing and the commitment that it takes to become a professional rower, I also was reacquainted with the entire world as it went through the Great Depression and also the world as it was during the lead-up to the Second World War. While the Boys in the Boat were trying to win championships, there were dark tidings overseas in Germany. What I wasn't aware of was that Hitler's goal in going after the Olympics for 1936 was setting the stage for the biggest "bait and switch" con ever committed. None of the participating countries were actually aware of what was going on in Germany when the Olympics were held there in 1936. I listened to this book on audiobook and found it extremely gripping. Edward Harrimann does an excellent job narrating this book. As I listened I realized that the training that young rowers go through in some of the most awful conditions, gives new meaning to the words "True Grit" . I highly recommend this book. If you are new to non-fiction it would be a good place to start as it reads like the best adventure fiction. You will come to know and love these nine young men and to cheer as loud for them as if you were at one of their regattas. Highly recommend.

As a fan of all things sports, I love rooting for the underdog. And “The Boys in the Boat” by Daniel James Brown is the epitome of the underdog story. By the end, you’ll feel like you know the nine college students that made up the University of Washington’s 1936 crew team and you’ll be cheering as they row their way to victory over the Nazis at the Berlin Olympics.

Joe Rantz is the heart of this story as it’s his life experiences that are woven into all the details throughout the University of Washington crew team’s journey to the Olympics. He’ll introduce you to the other boys in the boat, the sport of rowing, what life was like during the Great Depression, and how the team overcame immense obstacles in competition to become gold medalists.

Before picking this book up, I knew nothing about the sport of rowing. My knowledge of the 1936 Berlin Olympics was limited to the four gold medals Jesse Owens won in track and field. Plus, all I knew about the Great Depression was what I was taught in school. The way in which “The Boys in the Boat” expanded what I knew about each is why this is one of my go-to recommendations.

“The Boys in the Boat” is about beating the odds, finding hope in desperate times, and how a group of ordinary college boys trying to survive did the extraordinary. Whether you’re a sports fan or not, this is a story worth discovering more about.

This was a tough book to read. Most have heard of the Donner Party, but this book covers the expedition in detail, mostly through the experience of Sarah Graves, a survivor. Mistakes, bad advice and motives contributed to the disaster. The lost and desperate emigrants resorted to not only cannibalism but also murder. Is this heroic? The author closes the book with this: " hope is the hero's domain, not the Fool's Because if we dare to hope even when doing so might undo us- we leave the worlds we create behind us, swirling in our wakes eternal and effervescent with the beauty of our aspirations. "
Something to think about.

Gr 5 Up—This focuses on four young Japanese Americans who fought for their country during World War II, three
on the warfront and one as a protester in the courts—all despite the treacherous Executive Order 9066, which
incarcerated all people of Japanese descent. Equal parts enraging and inspiring, this is narrative nonfiction at its
best.

Exactly what I needed right now. A group of working class underdogs bond together to go and give Hitler a black eye. Somehow, though I knew the ending all along, the author kept me in the edge of my seat.

In this literary historical narrative, Daniel James Brown tells the story of nine young men who became national heroes during the Great Depression. They were members of the University of Washington's eight-oared rowing crew (and the coxswain) who represented the USA at the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936. These student athletes all came from working class backgrounds and they all had to struggle to make their way academically into college as well as spending countless hours practicing on Lake Washington.

Brown offers a background history of all 9 members of the University of Washington crew, but focuses most deeply on Joe Rantz, the poorest of the boys. Rantz was forced to live on his own by his father and step-mother at the age of 15 and carries the feeling of abandonment to the University of Washington where he's bullied for being poor. Through the crew he finds acceptance and a sense of purpose. The book also talks about the life and career of the team's no-nonsense coach Al Ulbrickson, who had been a student rower at Washington less than a decade earlier. The poetic English boat builder George Yeomans Pocock also plays a big part in the story. Working in the loft of the Washington shell house, Pocock built wooden racing shells that were renown throughout the country, and served as a mentor for young athletes like Rantz,

Starting in 1933, Rantz's freshman year, Brown details Ulbrickson's plans to form a crew that could compete in the 1936 Olympics. Collegiate rowing at the time was an extremely popular spectator sport with national radio coverage. Despite all the time they spent practicing, there were only two major annual competitions on Washington's calendar. The first was a race against their archrivals at University of California. The other was a race on the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, New York against several elite Eastern universities. Washington and Cal had only begun challenging the Eastern schools' supremacy in the 1920s. In 1936, the Washington crew teams (including JV and Freshmen) swept all of these events before also winning at the US Olympic Trials for the right to represent the country in Berlin.

Throughout the book, Brown offers the parallel story of Aldolf Hitler planning to use the games to show the world that Nazi Germany was a powerful - but -benign - nation. This included deceiving the US Olympic Committee about the true severity of discrimination against German Jews when the USOC was under pressure from protestors to boycott the games in Berlin. The final chapters detail the experience of the Washington crew in Germany, including the dramatic final race. The fact that we know the team will win gold should make it anticlimatic, but since the Washington team had a habit of coming from behind to win races (while facing challenges like a deliriously sick member of the crew) makes the race descriptions exciting. Even if you know nothing about rowing, Brown describes the tactics and terminology so well that the reader is well-versed in it by the Olympic races.

A deep, intimate look at the men who rowed in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. It wasn't a miracle - it was tenacity and trust between the rowers that made the seemingly impossible a reality.

In 1936, nine working-class boys from the University of Washington went to the Berlin Olympics in a quest for the gold medal. Their sport: rowing, a sport of which George Yeoman Pocock said, "That is the formula for endurance and success: rowing with the heart and the head as well as physical strength." It is an emotional, mental, and physical sport which, in this particular case, asks that nine human beings be in perfect tune with each other.

Author Daniel James Brown does an excellent job of putting his story into the context of the world stage, a time in which Hitler was determined to become master of the world-- and also a time when the world was still in the grip of the Depression.

At the heart of The Boys in the Boat is Joe Rantz of the University of Washington rowing team. At the age of ten, he was abandoned by his parents. Joe's father was willing to follow the lead of his second wife, a woman who decided that there were too many mouths to feed and that this child had to go. At one point, she told him, "Make your own life, Joe. Stay out of ours." Brown builds his story from the boys' journals and vivid memories, and it's a true Cinderella story. These boys were competing in an elite sport normally thought of as belonging to the privileged rich of the East Coast.

Often compared to Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken, I found The Boys in the Boat more in tune with another of her books, Seabiscuit: An American Legend, with its emphasis on sport, the Depression, and a fascinating cast. As much as I savored the stories of the boys on the University of Washington rowing team, I also appreciated the in-depth look at the sport of rowing itself. I never knew how popular it was in the 1930s or how demanding it was.

If you're in the mood for a thrilling, eye-opening, often heart-wrenching, slice of history, I highly recommend The Boys in the Boat.½

While this is a book about the USA Olympic nine man rowing team, it is also a book about 1930's America and the many challenges and disasters its people faced. The Great Depression the Dust Bowel, labour unrest, poverty, rise of dictators in Europe are all covered in depth.

Each character, whether rower, or parent are examined biographically. One learns much about competative rowing, maybe more than one wants to know, but this reader it interesting and my admiration for the sport is greatly increased after reading about the workouts in snow and sleet during November. The main theme is ow those nine working class young men over came many obstacles including poverty, class prejudice, academic stress, and the tough physical demands of the sport.

The trip to the 1936 Olympics to face Hitler's new Germany is well documented. How Hitler tried to fool the world as to what he was doing in the new Germany by using propaganda and showing only what he and his cronies wanted the world to see is explained.

The nine young Americans (including coxswain Bob Moch) who made up the team in the Husky Clipper that would eventually edge to victory by six-tenths of a second ahead of the Italians in the Olympics emerged from the harsh realities of the Depression, as Brown (The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride, 2009, etc.) delineates in this thorough study of the early rowing scene. The journey of one young rower, Joe Rantz, forms the emotional center of the narrative. A tall, strapping country boy who had largely been fending for himself in Sequim, Wash., in 1933, he got a shot as a freshman at making the prestigious crew team at UW, which was led by freshman coach Tom Bolles and head coach Al Ulbrickson. Many strands converge in the narrative, culminating in a rich work of research, from the back story involving the creation of UW?s rowing program to the massive planning and implementation of the Berlin Olympics by Hitler?s engineer Werner March, specifically the crew venue at the Langer See. The UW team honed its power and finesse in the lead-up seasons by racing against its nemesis, the University of California at Berkeley, as well as in East Coast regattas. Despite the threat of an American boycott, the Berlin Olympics were carefully orchestrated by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and filmed by Leni Riefenstahl to show the world the terrifying images of Aryan ?purity? and Nazi supremacy. Yet for these American boys, it was an amazing dream.A touching, fairly uncomplicated portrayal of rowing legends.

(2013) NF Account of the University of Washington rowing crew that eventually went to the 1936 Olympics. They won the 8-man gold medal overcoming long odds and bad lane placement in front of Adolf Hitler that helped to spoil his dream of a German dominated games. Very good story about Joe Rantz who was in second position in the boat and his overcoming meager background to struggle to stay in school and become an Olympian. KIRKUS REVIEWThe long, passionate journey of the University of Washington rowing team to the 1936 Berlin Olympics.The nine young Americans (including coxswain Bob Moch) who made up the team in the Husky Clipper that would eventually edge to victory by six-tenths of a second ahead of the Italians in the Olympics emerged from the harsh realities of the Depression, as Brown (The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride, 2009, etc.) delineates in this thorough study of the early rowing scene. The journey of one young rower, Joe Rantz, forms the emotional center of the narrative. A tall, strapping country boy who had largely been fending for himself in Sequim, Wash., in 1933, he got a shot as a freshman at making the prestigious crew team at UW, which was led by freshman coach Tom Bolles and head coach Al Ulbrickson. Many strands converge in the narrative, culminating in a rich work of research, from the back story involving the creation of UW's rowing program to the massive planning and implementation of the Berlin Olympics by Hitler's engineer Werner March, specifically the crew venue at the Langer See. The UW team honed its power and finesse in the lead-up seasons by racing against its nemesis, the University of California at Berkeley, as well as in East Coast regattas. Despite the threat of an American boycott, the Berlin Olympics were carefully orchestrated by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and filmed by Leni Riefenstahl to show the world the terrifying images of Aryan ?purity? and Nazi supremacy. Yet for these American boys, it was an amazing dream.A touching, fairly uncomplicated portrayal of rowing legends.Pub Date: June 4th, 2013ISBN: 978-0-670-02581-7Page count: 432ppPublisher: VikingReview Posted Online: March 17th, 2013Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1st, 2013

We listened to this book while traveling cross country. The first half of the book was captivating, and then I found my mind wandering because the content felt repetitive. The prep for the races, and the races themselves, were becoming boring. Some editing would have helped make this story more compelling.

I loved this book. It’s a wonderfully written story about the American crew team who went to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. The book concentrates primarily on Joe Rantz and his story but it’s also about the other boys who make up the boat along with the technicalities of the sport. It’s set against the backdrop of major events taking place in the world in the 1920s and 1930s. It makes me wish Poughkeepsie was still the place to be for crew racing. The description of the races both in Poughkeepsie and Berlin are wonderfully written. Great story!

This was easily one of the best non-fiction books I have ever read. It is much more than just about rowing in a crew. The reader follows the life of Joe Rantz and his times towards the 1936 race for the 8 man crew race for Gold. You learn about times of joy, hardship and sorrow in so many lives. There is history, engineering, athletics, team building, character development, romance, family struggles, and so much more.

Read and enjoy. You will be pleasantly surprised.

Outstanding. I'm telling everyone I know to read this book.

I read Alma Katsu's book [b:The Hunger|30285766|The Hunger|Alma Katsu|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1497803277l/30285766._SY75_.jpg|50762090] a couple of years ago, and I loved it. It's a fictionalized horror story of the Donner Party's journey. It's an excellent book. But, while it is well researched, it's fiction. I've been curious about the real story since then.

This is an extremely well-written history of the Donner Party and the difficulties faced by so many American emigrants who went west in search of a destiny they believed was manifest. Their story is dramatic and horrific enough to be gripping. It's a tale of survivalist adventure that rivals that of any modern descent into a deep cave or a trek up a dangerous mountain.

I appreciated Brown's account because it was written without modern judgement. He wrote about them as people of their time in history and location. It enabled me to understand them as they were, not as people who understand the world as we do. They set out to change their futures and the futures of generations to come.

In his epilogue, Brown retraced their route. It was a heartfelt journey that allowed me to connect the past to the modern day. My heart broke for all of them: the heroes, the scoundrels, the loving, the children, the young, the adults, the living, and the dead. It also allowed me to see that they were just one group among so many. The epilogue drew Sarah's story to a satisfactory close. Everyone's history eventually comes to a close sooner or later. That's epically clear in Indifferent Stars.

After I finished reading the book, I sought out their diaries online and was delighted to find the diaries of Patrick Breen at the Online Archive of California (oac.cdlib.org). I will find additional sources of original information. Not for the sensationalism of cannibalism, but for the people who survived a series of horrible mistakes and a harrowing price for making them.

I'm so glad I read this book.

I'll clean the spelling and grammar mistakes later. Tired.

I finally read this because I want to go see the movie. This book is so well done, and the organization is fantastic. There is so much info as it jumps between people and places and years, yet it is never confusing or overwhelming. It is solid history/biography.

I am still excited for the movie, but I do not expect the movie to include nearly so much info or detail.

Good story about the American rowing Eights who competed at Hitler's Olympics games in Berlin in 1936. Well researched and written.

Absolutely fantastic - highly recommend.

I don't know if it's fair for me to rate a book from a genre I don't normally like. I found so much of it boring because I'm not interested in boats, rowing, or Hitler. I enjoyed the personal part of the story, particularly Joe's life and relationships. The final chapters describing the actual Olympics were great, too.

If you do love boats, rowing, and/or Hitler history, you'll love all of the book, not just the parts I enjoyed.