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Gerald Sinstadt's Reviews > Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
by Laura Hillenbrand
by Laura Hillenbrand
Gerald Sinstadt's review
bookshelves: non-fiction-general
Feb 07, 11
bookshelves: non-fiction-general
Read from February 02 to 06, 2011
To go counter to the other enthusiastic reviews here demands explanation, so pardon a digression. A dear friend with an intuitive sense for my reading interests sends me books from the United States, rarely failing to hit the target. Thus I have enjoyed such disparate works as David McCullough's "The Great Bridge," PD James' "Talking about Detective Fiction," Pope Brock's "Charlatan" (which led me to the very different but equally engrossing "Indiana Gothic,") Larry Tye's "Satchel," Simon Winchester's anthology "Best American Travel Writing," Ben Merich's "The Accidental Millionaires," not to mention the novels of Josef Kanon among others.
From this same source, some years ago, came "Sea Biscuit," much enjoyed. It should have followed that the same author's "Unbroken" would have similar appeal, particularly with its Track and Field associations, a subject that interests us both. Why, then, the disappointment?
Laura Hillenbrand has done her homework - there are thirty pages of notes, detailing sources. Many of these are personal interviews conducted by telephone with the key personnel. But, more than fifty years after the event, are those recollections of what this person or that thought at a given moment still precise, or has the author used a certain amount of imaginative licence? It would have been reasonable to do so, but one would like to have been told.
In the early chapters the reader may raise an occasional sceptical eyebrow. It seems that, travelling to the Berlin Olympics by sea in 1936, Louis Zamperini so indulged himself in the restaurant that he put on twelve pounds. Was there no official supervision? And, once arrived, the runner was surprised to discover that his event - the 5000 meters - required him to qualify though a heat. Could the US management and coaching staff have left him in such basic ignorance? And although both Jesse Owens and Adolf Hitler are mentioned in passing, Ms Hillenbrand curiously makes no reference to the former's four gold medals or the Fuhrer's boycott, which surely would have impacted upon the US team.
The aviation sections read authentically enough, but it is suprising to read of "antiaircraft fire, including flak." My understanding is that the terms were synonymous. Flak, after all, derives from the initial letters of flieger abwehr-kanone or pilot-defence-gun (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary).
None of this, of course, justifies a mere two stars, but here the failing may be mine. One cannot but admire the resilience that enabled Zamperini to come through horrors almost too horrific to describe and emerge a fulfilled human being. My problem is that those horrors - the mangling of colleagues on flying missions in the Pacific, the deranging effects of thirst and hunger together with the threat of sharks while adrift on a raft for six weeks, and then the unspeakable treatment meted out in Japanese POW camps, the postwar poverty, depression and alcoholism - are described for page after page. These are valid, central themes of the story but the unrelenting catalogue wore me down before catharsis could pierce the darkness.
Maybe it was me.
From this same source, some years ago, came "Sea Biscuit," much enjoyed. It should have followed that the same author's "Unbroken" would have similar appeal, particularly with its Track and Field associations, a subject that interests us both. Why, then, the disappointment?
Laura Hillenbrand has done her homework - there are thirty pages of notes, detailing sources. Many of these are personal interviews conducted by telephone with the key personnel. But, more than fifty years after the event, are those recollections of what this person or that thought at a given moment still precise, or has the author used a certain amount of imaginative licence? It would have been reasonable to do so, but one would like to have been told.
In the early chapters the reader may raise an occasional sceptical eyebrow. It seems that, travelling to the Berlin Olympics by sea in 1936, Louis Zamperini so indulged himself in the restaurant that he put on twelve pounds. Was there no official supervision? And, once arrived, the runner was surprised to discover that his event - the 5000 meters - required him to qualify though a heat. Could the US management and coaching staff have left him in such basic ignorance? And although both Jesse Owens and Adolf Hitler are mentioned in passing, Ms Hillenbrand curiously makes no reference to the former's four gold medals or the Fuhrer's boycott, which surely would have impacted upon the US team.
The aviation sections read authentically enough, but it is suprising to read of "antiaircraft fire, including flak." My understanding is that the terms were synonymous. Flak, after all, derives from the initial letters of flieger abwehr-kanone or pilot-defence-gun (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary).
None of this, of course, justifies a mere two stars, but here the failing may be mine. One cannot but admire the resilience that enabled Zamperini to come through horrors almost too horrific to describe and emerge a fulfilled human being. My problem is that those horrors - the mangling of colleagues on flying missions in the Pacific, the deranging effects of thirst and hunger together with the threat of sharks while adrift on a raft for six weeks, and then the unspeakable treatment meted out in Japanese POW camps, the postwar poverty, depression and alcoholism - are described for page after page. These are valid, central themes of the story but the unrelenting catalogue wore me down before catharsis could pierce the darkness.
Maybe it was me.
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From this same source, some years ago, came "Sea Biscuit," much enjoyed. It should have followed that the same author's "Unbroken" would have similar appeal, particularly with its Track and Field associations, a subject that interests us both. Why, then, the disappointment?
Laura Hillenbrand has done her homework - there are thirty pages of notes, detailing sources. Many of these are personal interviews conducted by telephone with the key personnel. But, more than fifty years after the event, are those recollections of what this person or that thought at a given moment still precise, or has the author used a certain amount of imaginative licence? It would have been reasonable to do so, but one would like to have been told.
In the early chapters the reader may raise an occasional sceptical eyebrow. It seems that, travelling to the Berlin Olympics by sea in 1936, Louis Zamperini so indulged himself in the restaurant that he put on twelve pounds. Was there no official supervision? And, once arrived, the runner was surprised to discover that his event - the 5000 meters - required him to qualify though a heat. Could the US management and coaching staff have left him in such basic ignorance? And although both Jesse Owens and Adolf Hitler are mentioned in passing, Ms Hillenbrand curiously makes no reference to the former's four gold medals or the Fuhrer's boycott, which surely would have impacted upon the US team.
The aviation sections read authentically enough, but it is suprising to read of "antiaircraft fire, including flak." My understanding is that the terms were synonymous. Flak, after all, derives from the initial letters of flieger abwehr-kanone or pilot-defence-gun (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary).
None of this, of course, justifies a mere two stars, but here the failing may be mine. One cannot but admire the resilience that enabled Zamperini to come through horrors almost too horrific to describe and emerge a fulfilled human being. My problem is that those horrors - the mangling of colleagues on flying missions in the Pacific, the deranging effects of thirst and hunger together with the threat of sharks while adrift on a raft for six weeks, and then the unspeakable treatment meted out in Japanese POW camps, the postwar poverty, depression and alcoholism - are described for page after page. These are valid, central themes of the story but the unrelenting catalogue wore me down before catharsis could pierce the darkness.
Maybe it was me.