Unbroken

This is a great book and I am going to tell you about how great it is, but first, a note on how I came to read it.

As you may or may not know, when I was in high school, I was a runner.  I enjoyed it, but got out of the habit.  My cousin Shawn, who is in the army  and was deployed to Iraq for awhile told me that working out is the favorite past time of people living on bases.  So, I had a great idea.  I thought that this would be a perfect place for me to try to become a runner again.  You know, fall back in love with it.  I did what I thought was the most logical first step, I bought a copy of Runner's World magazine.  I read all of it.  One particular story I enjoyed is about a man named Louie Zamperini.  There was an excerpt from the book as well as an interview with this man.  I was hooked. The part that got me was Louie saying this, "I ran Mt. Hollywood, when I was 65, in eight minutes, 28 seconds.  I held the record for about six years until some high school miler beat it by about 10 seconds."  Wow.  I wanted to know more about this guy. While I didn't strap on my running shoes and go for a jog, I did log on to amazon and order this book.

The book is primarily about his time in World War II.  It begins with his childhood and how he terrorized the town of Torrance, California.  His story is great.  He made it to the Olympics when many people had never even heard his name.  He ran the mile in 4:08 in 1938 and probably would have been the first man to make it in under 4 minutes, but never got the chance because of the war.

He went to war.  His B24 crashed into the ocean, he and 2 other survivors spent 47 days floating around the Pacific on a raft, fighting off sharks.  They finally  made it ashore, only to be captured by Japan and spent more than 2 years as a POW.  This is the bulk of the book.  It tells not only Louie's story, but the stories of some other great men as well.  The final part of the book is about his life Post WWII and how he dealt with all of it in a time when PTSD was not diagnosed or treated.

There is so much in this book that I loved.  I think what I loved most was that I was able to learn more about the second World War.  The people who served in the war are real to me now.  This book has only a few stories out of millions.  I now have a greater sense of what people went through during World War II for the greater good of humanity.  I started this book wanting to know more about The Great Zamperini and finished it knowing much more about this time in our history. 

For the record, while I have ventured a jog on the treadmill a few times, I am still a long way from feeling that my day is incomplete without a run.  I will say this, my collection of running magazines is growing and I am certain that one of these days, the inspiration will come.  Happy Reading.-M.