This book is phenomenal. The crisp narrative… the compelling characters… the Olympics… phe-nom-en-al!
Generally, I’m a sucker for stories that highlight blue collar folks who grind-hard and work to accomplish a goals — no matter the size — that help define their lives. There’s something rewarding when you hear of a human, same ole’ species as the rest of us, who commits, often through unrivaled dedication and relentless prioritization, to doing something near impossible. This book tells how calloused, country road hands and backbreaking, sweat sopping drive led nine boys from the University of Washington to an Olympic gold medal… but it was in 1936 so it also involves beating Nazis, which anytime Nazis lose, the world is a better place. To me, the actual boys in the boat epitomize the absolute greatest version of American Dream — despite so much personal hardship, meager finances, and nonexistent opportunity, waking up earlier and working harder than everyone else got them a shot at a better life. Unfortunately, in many cases, it doesn’t always work out like that but it sure feels darn good when it does.
When I began putting off sleep (and pretty much everything else in life on a Friday night) to continue moving through each addicting paragraph in The Boys in the Boat, I knew I had borrowed a book that would stick with me. Yet, what became a more certain sign that this was a story I’d cherish was when I showed up to the gym on a Saturday to try rowing for the first time in my life. The story not only humbled me as I was reminded of the struggles during the Great Depression but also I attempted to use an erg machine, which if you haven’t been on one, is a truly grueling device. Within a minute of beginning, my legs were burning with lactic acid and my lower back started showing its age, all while a time/pace tracker reminded me of how much harder I could be working. Truly, Brown’s telling had me so infatuated with the story and the work ethic required to succeed, I wanted to actually feel what it meant to row 2000m.
I finished the book in a weekend and continued rowing for two months until my lower back recommended I read about more sedentary topics. This book is rocket fuel for anyone who needs to be reminded what dedication and perspiration can do.
Worth noting: if you want to read another amazing story of work ethic and defeating Nazis during the Berlin Olympics, I recommend Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics. If you want to better understand the hardships endured during Great Depression, I recommend reading The Worst Hard Time.
Favorite Quotes / Takeaways:
“The ability to yield, to bend, to give way, to accommodate, he said, was sometimes a source of strength in men as well as in wood, so long as it was helmed by inner resolve and by principle.” -pg 215
“They were now representatives of something much larger than themselves – a way of life, a shared set of values. Liberty was perhaps the most fundamental of those values. But the things that held them together – trust in each other, mutual respect, humility, fair play, watching out for one another – those were also part of what America meant to all of them.” -pg 289
“When the critical moment in a close race was upon you, you had to know something he did not – that down in your core you still had something in reserve, something you had not yet shown, something that once revealed would make him doubt himself, make him falter just when it counted the most. Like so much in life, crew was partly about confidence, partly about knowing your own heart.”
“If you simply kept your eyes open, it seemed, you just might find something valuable in the most unlikely of places. The trick was to recognize a good thing when you saw it, no matter how odd or worthless it might at first appear, no matter who else might just walk away and leave it behind.”
“Look, Son, if there’s one thing I’ve figured out about life, it’s that if you want to be happy, you have to learn how to be happy on your own.” -pg 58
“Physiologists, in fact, have calculated that rowing a two-thousand-meter race—the Olympic standard—takes the same physiological toll as playing two basketball games back-to-back. And it exacts that toll in about six minutes.”
About the Author: Daniel James Brown has worked as a college writing professor as well as a technical writer. Currently, he writes full-time and has published four non-fiction books from his home in Seattle, Washington.
Daniel Dickey
