Laura Hillenbrand is the author of "Seabiscuit" - the book from which the movie was made. (For those of you who don't read - yes, Seabiscuit was based on a book!). This newest book, Unbroken, is about a World War II vet named Louie Zamperini. Zamperini was a world-class runner, thought by many to potentially be the first person in the world to break a 4-minute mile. He ran in college and the Olympics before WW II started. The first part of the book covers this portion of his life.
After WW II started, Louie joined the Army Air Corps, where he ended up as a bombardier in a B-24. (For those who don't know, the bombardier is the person charged with aiming and dropping the bombs - a B-24 was a bomber used extensively in WW II, especially in the Pacific.) After a while, and several "successful" trips, his plane was shot down (or crashed - can't remember if it was actually shot down), while on a rescue trip for another plane that had been shot down. Louie, the pilot, and one other member of their crew survived the crash. Louie and the pilot survived about 2000 miles of ocean crossing on their life raft (covering about 45 days), and were then captured and put into various Japanese POW camps.
The book tells the story of Louie's life. The author had extensive interviews with both him, and lots of others. There was plenty of news coverage of the events, due to Louie's past running prowess. Hillenbrand's writing style is enough to draw you into the story, and make you wonder what ever happens to the guy. (I wouldn't necessarily say it's "captivating" - but, after all, the book's not a novel, it's a historical biography. I don't know if that genre is supposed to be captivating.)
Lots of other folks have reviewed this book, it's been fairly popular. My wife and I checked it out from the library often enough, we just weren't able to ever get more than a few pages in before we had to return it (the wait list was long - so we couldn't just renew it). From what we'd seen, it was good enough that we ended up just buying it.
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