The Boys in the Boat - Daniel James Brown

This is the story of the young college men from Washington State who won the 1936 Olympic rowing championship held in Germany during Hitler's rise to power.  But only the last 25 or so pages is about that triumphant race near Berlin.  The rest of the book is about the boys themselves; their early lives and exhaustive detail of their rowing training during college.  Their are brief interludes that keep us up to date on what is going on in Germany while they prepare for the race back home in Washington.

I felt the story was way too drawn out with repetitive portrayals of the main rowers.  The book could have easily been half the length.  I appreciate that the author did lots of research but he didn't have to cram every piece of it into the story.

Published:   Read: May 2015  Genre: biography

ISBN: 10-1-59413-775-X