Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption in Crazy Challenge Connection

Aug 26, 2019 Hannah rated it really liked it

Shelves: around-the-world-2019, tbr-2019-marathon-tbr, stand-alone-2019, veterans-and-uniforms, 2019-challenge, owned-books, nonfiction-history, cover-loves, audiobooks-2019, libraries-2019

I haven't read a lot about the Pacific front of WW2, and wow was this one sobering. It was shocking to think of the amount of men who died just in training in the B-24s, and once they got in the field the casualties were horrific. Sure makes me thankful for how many of the men faced death with a smile on their faces just to keep a totalitarian society at bay.

If you're considering this for a younger reader, do grab the young reader copy. This one does have some torture scenes that are pretty horr ...more

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Feb 06, 2016 Olivermagnus rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2024, non-fiction, ww2, x6, zjuly-2024

This book opens with bombardier, Louis Zamperini, lying on a raft in the Pacific on June 23, 1943. He and three other survivors of a plane crash are starving skeletons after 27 days at sea. Sharks are circling their leaking raft. Suddenly, a plane is spotted. They fire off a flare, only to discover the plane is a Japanese bomber, which begins a strafing run. While reading the first two pages it's impossible to believe this is a true story. Leaving us in stunned suspense, the author takes us back This book opens with bombardier, Louis Zamperini, lying on a raft in the Pacific on June 23, 1943. He and three other survivors of a plane crash are starving skeletons after 27 days at sea. Sharks are circling their leaking raft. Suddenly, a plane is spotted. They fire off a flare, only to discover the plane is a Japanese bomber, which begins a strafing run. While reading the first two pages it's impossible to believe this is a true story. Leaving us in stunned suspense, the author takes us back to the beginnings of Louis' life.

When we first meet young Louis he seems to be headed in the wrong direction. He spends his early days burglarizing homes, stealing cars, and jumping onto railroad boxcars. While evading the cops with his incredible speed, his brother tells him he should join the track team, which eventually leads him to the 1936 Berlin Olympics as the man most likely to break the four minute mile. After Pearl Harbor, Louis joins the Army Air Force, trains as an air bombardier, and flies 37 successful combat missions in a B-24 bomber in the Pacific War against Japan. Then he gets unlucky. Shot down by a Japanese Zero, Louis and his two surviving aircrew ditch amid thousands of miles of empty ocean.

Taken to a Japanese POW camp Louis is beaten and humiliated with appalling regularity by one particular guard, Mitsuhiro Watanabe, nicknamed "the Bird" by the prisoners. As sport he was made to race against Japanese runners. If he won, he was bludgeoned into unconsciousness. A constant round of beatings, abuse, starvation and torture reduces Louis and his companions to skeletal zombies. You will shudder as you read the details of the brutality these men endured. Upon release from the prison camp, Louis returns to home a broken man. His marriage falls apart and he becomes an alcoholic. He can't seem to cope with life, and who can blame him. One day he attends a revival conducted by Billy Graham and turns his life around. While the first and last parts were not as riveting as the POW sections, I am still giving this book 5 stars.

"Unbroken" wasn't an easy book to read. The beginning, especially the time stranded at sea, was quite dramatic and fascinating, but once the action switched to the prison camp I had to skim over some of the more sadistic actions of the Japanese guards. But then I though that I owed it to Louis to read the details. All I had to do was read his story, while he had to endure it for over two years. While painful to read in some cases, it's probably one of my very favorite non-fiction books. ...more

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Aug 05, 2019 Andrea Cox rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1940s, 2018-pick-a-theme-wwii, cover-love, animals, country-germany, nonfiction, weddings, favorites, zz-challenges-2019, 2018-wonderful-world-of-disney

Heartbreaking.
Tough, tough read.
Hope and determination to live.
I’m so grateful this story has been told, because it’s crucial we remember our horrifying past so it doesn’t become our future.

Content: war/prisoner-of-war violence, nudity, expletives, profanity, alcohol, tobacco

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Apr 10, 2019 BookishStitcher rated it it was amazing

Wow, what these men went through... it was so heartbreaking. I don't think I have even an ounce of the resilience they had. The parts about the Japanese POW camps were horrific. ...more

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Jul 15, 2016 Vickie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: gemstones, nonfiction, ww2, crazy-cover-challenge, jelly-belly-challenge, 1-2-3-challenge, history, audiobook, 5-star, school-days

Oh, my goodness! I loved listening to this book. I am so happy that I chose the 13+-hour long audiobook over the hard copy; what a story to listen to!!! Louie Zamperini's life was just truly unbroken: from being an Olympic runner to surviving as a POW in a Japanese camp, his life is truly about survival, triumph, redemption, and finally forgiveness.

Go Cards! L1C4!! ...more

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Jul 31, 2017 XiangYu rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites, nonfiction

This book starts off with summarising the life of Louie Zamperini from his boyhood marked with cunning, yet genius acts, him competing at the Berlin Olympics and even catching the eye of Adolf Hitler, enlisting as a WWII bombardier, eventually being stranded at sea with his flight mates Phil and Mac. Yet, more trials await Louie, until he finds redemption for the unspeakable sufferings, years after the end of the war.

That being said about Louie, this book is written using a third person narrator This book starts off with summarising the life of Louie Zamperini from his boyhood marked with cunning, yet genius acts, him competing at the Berlin Olympics and even catching the eye of Adolf Hitler, enlisting as a WWII bombardier, eventually being stranded at sea with his flight mates Phil and Mac. Yet, more trials await Louie, until he finds redemption for the unspeakable sufferings, years after the end of the war.

That being said about Louie, this book is written using a third person narrator which was very appreciated. There was broader perspective for the entire book, being able to glimpse into Louie's life, knowing more about his stubbornly loving family, fellow war comrades and me being educated on the Pacific war. Initially, I had thought this would be a straightforward history sum-up kind of book but no, I was taken aback several times, flipping back a few pages to reread in disbelief. You would think that there was only so much cruelty in the world...

As much as this is a nonfiction book centring around the Second World War, there were unbelievable comic moments, even during a flight on the bomber B-24 Super Man:

On another day, to get even with Cuppernell and Phil for regularly stealing his chewing gum, Louie replaced his ordinary gum with a laxative variety. Just before a long day of sea search, Cuppernell and Phil each stole three pieces, triple the standard dose. As Super Man flew over the Pacific that morning, Louie watched with delight as pilot and copilot, in great distress, made alternating dashes to the back of the plane, yelling for someone to get a toilet bag ready. On his last run, Cuppernell discovered that all the bags had been used. With nowhere else to go, he dropped his pants and hung his rear end out the waist window while four crewmen clung to him to prevent him from falling out. When the ground crew saw the results all over Super Man's tail, they were furious. "It was like an abstract painting," Louie said later.

An incredible genius, that is what Louie Zamperini is. Not only with Louie, but with everyone in the book I felt attachment. Laura Hillenbrand's writing brought all of them to life.

I hereby admit that I do not have a marked interest in History, but a slight interest in military operations. Me borrowing this book from my library was only encouraged by me having signed up for a nonfiction book challenge in one of my Goodreads groups. However, reading this book was not at all difficult. It is a compelling read through and through. I do not have any surviving grandparents but I would think that this would have been their experience, probably not as trying as Louie's and his comrades'. A deep respect for the war veterans.

This book would have been great for the younger me learning about the Second World War in my classroom. Correction, I learned about how Singapore fell to the Japanese Occupation, with little to no attempt at understanding the events on the global scale. Arguably I was much younger then (around 10 to 12 years old) but I believe, now as a 20-year-old human being, that having a broad global perspective on major historical events such as this War itself, would mould my way of understanding this world better. Instead, my focus for 10 years or so had been more or less restricted to the three-year Japanese Occupation. I believe that younger schooling children would benefit greatly from obtaining a global understanding, not only about the European war but the Pacific war as well. ...more

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Jan 28, 2019 Nicole P rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: second-chances, to-serve-and-protect, sporty-spice, save-a-life, hello-darkness-my-old-friend, back-in-the-day, teach-me-something-new, z-2019-rlftci-book-count-challenge, z-2019-rrrc-addicts

This has been on my radar for quite some time and I'm glad I finally got around to it. This was an emotional read. Not easy to read about a POW and the conditions and treatment he had to endure. Hillenbrand did a remarkable job in taking the reader from the beginning of Louie's life and the subsequent tragedy he had to face. Louie's courage, perseverance and determination was awe inspiring. A great read that I highly recommend if you're interested in WWII or just human endurance. ...more

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Jul 17, 2012 Megalion rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: from-shelfari, year-read-2014

Utterly amazing. Very well told story of a man who went from great accomplishments to living the worst kind of daily hell.

I'm really looking forward to the movie, especially with Angelina Jolie directing it. ...more

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