The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

The Boys in the Boat is a nonfiction story about the University of Washington crew team in 1936 which won the gold medal. The well-written story begins in 1932 as the boys enter the University of Washington in Seattle, a school with a long history of doing well at crew, but the coach, Al Ulbrickson, had never taken a team to the Olympics. The book is about the life of Ulbrickson, but more so of the boys he chose to lead his team. As much as their ultimate success at Munich was already known, Daniel James Brown has created an intense drama in which the outcome seemed uncertain. Clearly, the characters who would finally be in the Olympic boat were not known until the very end.

Brown successfully takes the reader through an education about this unique sport by focusing on the rich lives of the people in the boat, especially Joe Rantz, a quiet man who’s mother who died when he was only three, and then was abandoned by his father, stepmother and half-siblings when he was only 15 years old. Totally poor, Joe became a quiet man who was determined to find a way to get himself through college, and making the crew team was his means of doing so. Brown also focused on the life of the boat builder, poet, and crew savant, George Yeoman Pocock whose cedar sculls were the best in the world.

Of course, the story culminates in Germany, the Olympics of Jesse Owens (who was never mentioned in this book). Brown did a marvelous job of describing Germany in the 1930s and the importance of the Olympics to the Third Reich. He described it Germany’s attempt to show the world an illusion of itself as a progressive people, not the truth of their hatred that was already developing. He accurately captured the anti-Semitism which was sweeping the country. Hitler actually attended the finals of the eight-man race from which he walked away so disappointed, a defeat that Brown said portended the outcome of the war.

If you’re a fan of the history of World War II or of the Holocaust, this is a book for you. My report about this book is but a dry review of what was an exciting book. You certainly don’t have to be a sports fan or know anything about crew to love this work. Brown captured the beauty of teamwork at its finest.

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics is available on Amazon.