"Unbroken" (2010) - Laura Hillenbrand's Biography of Athlete and War Hero Louis Zamperini

[DonRocks]

I received "Unbroken," by Laura Hillenbrand as a gift from a friend, and I make it a point, whenever possible, to start *and finish* books that my friends give me. (That's why I limit my friends!)

I've been warned away from the movie by the same person who bought me the book, and that's good enough for me - I doubt I'll waste my time seeing it.

So far I've finished Part I (there are V Parts), and I enjoy it very much. The author, Laura Hillenbrand, has a good feel for biography, telling the story without a lot of embellishment, but putting key suspenseful items in the correct places to make it a real "page-turner" - it's not hard to see why this is a best-seller.

Louis Zamperini was a fascinating man, and I'm looking forward to reading his biography - he deserves no less, nor does my friend who gifted the book.

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Louis Zamperini - Sports, (DonRocks)
"Unbroken"          - Film    , (DonRocks)

[mdt]

While entertaining, the book is certainly much better. There is simply no way to cover Zamperini's amazing life experiences before, during, and after (not done in the movie at all) the war in ~2 hours. I am amazed that he and the hundreds of other POWs were able to survive the brutal conditions for such a long period of time. The human body and brain are truly remarkable.

[DonRocks]

While entertaining, the book is certainly much better. There is simply no way to cover Zamperini's amazing life experiences before, during, and after (not done in the movie at all) the war in ~2 hours. I am amazed that he and the hundreds of other POWs were able to survive the brutal conditions for such a long period of time. The human body and brain are truly remarkable.

I don't make a habit of reading 500+ page books that aren't literature, but this is my "fun" book.

(Ideally, II have one "learning book," one "literature book," and one "fun book" going simultaneously to handle every mood, and I try my hardest not to read *anything* else until I've finished one of them, at which point I'll move onto the next - I'll be reading the same three books for the next several months, I think.)

Here is some information about the athletic background of Louis Zamperini that won't spoil the book or the movie (if you want *zero* information about Zamperini, then don't click).

[DIShGo]

I am not a fan of biographies, but "Unbroken" is the exception for me. I bought a hardcover copy of the newly-released book in 2010, after hearing Laura Hillenbrand talk about it on the radio. Having read "Seabiscuit," I knew I would enjoy her writing style, and Louie Zamperini's story intrigued me. I was not disappointed.

Two years later, my son's high school had a "One School, One Book," program, where the entire student body and staff read "Unbroken" over the summer. The culmination of this, on Oct. 1, 2012, was a visit to the school by Mr. Zamperini, which I attended. He was just as I expected--witty, sharp, kind and humble.

Mr. Zamperini's story is fascinating, before, during and after the war. My complaint with the film is that it focuses too much on the "during," and brushes over the "after." The power of forgiveness is a major theme in the book that is barely touched upon in the movie.

[DonRocks]

This is on page 256 of my paperback edition:

"Though the Japanese press covered the European theater accurately, it was notorious for distorting the news of the Pacific war, sometimes absurdly. Louie once read a story about a Japanese pilot who ran out of ammunition during a dogfight, and downed his opponent with a rice ball."

[DonRocks]

I have a problem with the math on page 287 of my book.

The situation is as follows: gaunt, starving, sick multi-year POWs (including Zamperini) were required to lug backpacks full of coal, from a barge, up to a train - for transport to a steel mill. One cubic foot of coal (1 x 1 x 1) weighs a surprising 60 pounds.

How many of these cubic feet do you think these emaciated, dying prisoners could haul in one trip? One? Two? I'd say it's probably one (which would be a 60-pound backpack). There are human limits of strength and endurance, especially after being starved and weighing probably less than 125 pounds per man.

Further down the page, Hillenbrand says (from a POW's diary as her source) that a typical basket-bearer (the basket being essentially "the backpack") would haul *4 tons* of coal over the course of a day. That's 8,000 pounds each.

Divide 8,000 by 60, and you get 133.33. That's how many trips, lugging a 60-pound backpack, each POW would have to carry each day for that diary entry to be true. I assume walking from a barge to a train would involve maybe 50 yards (that's a random guess), almost surely uphill (rivers are at the lowest geographical point), followed by a walk up a narrow ramp onto the train.

Assuming 10 minutes per haul, that would be 1,333.33 minutes, or over 22 hours of non-stop hauling with a 60-pound backpack, walking uphill.

After the years of starvation, malnutrition, abuse, beatings, and disease these poor men were forced to endure, do you really think they could make 133.33 trips per day carrying 60 pounds on their back, given the shape they were in?

There's something wrong here, and I suspect it was simply a matter of the POW's diary innocently overstating how many tons of coal they carried per day which is certainly understandable. It's just that this book is *so* thoroughly researched, edited, and documented, that it's almost surprising someone didn't do a basic math check.

[porcupine]

There's something wrong here, and I suspect it was simply a matter of the POW's diary innocently overstating how many tons of coal they carried per day which is certainly understandable. It's just that this book is *so* thoroughly researched, edited, and documented, that it's almost surprising someone didn't do a basic math check.

It is incredibly well-researched, but I don't recall a single instance of the author questioning any of the facts she reports - which is one of two things about the book that I really didn't care for.   I assumed "innocently overstating" when I read the book.  It's not like there were any scientists on-site weighing the prisoners' baskets.  What would 20 pounds feel like to a someone nearly dead from starvation and exposure?

(The other was her writing style, which is incredibly dry.  Once again, true story trumps mediocre writing.)

[DonRocks]

It is incredibly well-researched, but I don't recall a single instance of the author questioning any of the facts she reports - which is one of two things about the book that I really didn't care for.   I assumed "innocently overstating" when I read the book.  It's not like there were any scientists on-site weighing the prisoners' baskets.  What would 20 pounds feel like to a someone nearly dead from starvation and exposure?

(The other was her writing style, which is incredibly dry.  Once again, true story trumps mediocre writing.)

There are a lot of individual facts which can't be cross-checked because they come from one source, and they're 70-years-old, but the sum-total of everything was most likely quite accurate. Never have I felt so much hatred for a single person in a book as I have for "The Bird," who - at the point where I'm reading - just cowered off into the woods (wisely, I will add).

Hillenbrand has done an incredible thing: If this was a fiction book, she would have every single reader cheering wildly for the atomic bombs dropping on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and wishing Allied soldiers could have stormed the POW camps on foot. Those two incidents were treated as near-magical "flashes of white light" without any of the dirty little accompaniments, and were directly accountable for our protagonists in the book (like Zamperini) living and not dying. Restated, had they not been dropped, there would have been no Louie Zamperini left to write about because he would have been dead within another week.

Those soldiers - some of them - could not have lifted 60-pounds because the two I saw pictured didn't *weigh* much more than 60 pounds; others, in a stock photo, were much, much better off, so it's a matter of "which camp and for how long." Still, one glance at the macro-statistics tells you that about nearly one-third of all Japanese POWs died from a host of reasons; *over* one-third of American POWs died.

Heroes. That's what they are to me. And my father, had he been just a year older, could have suffered the same fate as any of them.

The amount of hatred stoked in me by Hillenbrand was masterful, and I still have about 100 pages left to read.

[porcupine]

Hillenbrand managed to give me some insight into the anti-Japanese bigotry of some of my relatives, two generations removed.

[darkstar965]

I'm a huge fan of film as a uniquely powerful medium. More than the other arts, nearly all of which I love, film has the greatest power to unify, divide, inspire, cheer and change minds. "Precious Life" and "Albert Nobbs" are just two strong examples of recent years.

Many people, especially in this country, lack inclination to read. For that reason, it's fashionable to knock movies as less comprehensive and nuanced than their literary counterparts. While that's largely true, I think it misses the mark on two fronts. First, the social impact of movies I mention here. And, second, the special kind of art and decision making required to make a decent film about such a complicated and richly textured life such as Louis Zamperini's.

For my own part, seeing the film prompted to me to pick up the book which I otherwise might not have chosen.

Finally, there have been a few other amazing human stories from WWII brought to the screen in recent years. One of the better ones, Agnieszka Holland's "In Darkness', which is set in the sewers of Lvov, is worthy of more praise than what was done with Unbroken on screen. "In Darkness" premiered in late 2011, was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar and was based on a 1990 book "In The Sewers of Lvov" by Robert Marshall. Really compelling story as is Zamperini's.

[DonRocks]

Many people, especially in this country, lack inclination to read. For that reason, it's fashionable to knock movies as less comprehensive and nuanced than their literary counterparts. While that's largely true, I think it misses the mark on two fronts. First, the social impact of movies I mention here. And, second, the special kind of art and decision making required to make a decent film about such a complicated and richly textured life such as Louis Zamperini's.

Just yesterday, I was having a discussion with a member (feel free to chime in, member) about "In Cold Blood" - the book vs. the movie. She insists the movie is lame compared to the book; I've only seen the movie, but loved it, and I don't see how it could be called "lame" by any measure - that's pretty much where we left off. It was frustrating for me because I respect her opinion, and not having read the book, how can I really say?

There's space, time, and budget to write much more detail in a book than can be filmed, and there are certain things (thoughts, for example), that are just plain difficult to film well; yet, films have a much greater degree of sensory impact (a fact which Hollywood has vacuously profited from). I also consider picking up a book to be one hell of an investment (which is why I don't mind springing for nice, leather-bound books if they're available); whereas a film can be "tolerated" for a couple of hours, and then hated afterwards without too much time lost.

I'm proud to say, after finishing Troilus and Cressida (which I began reading in 2003), that I have now finished every single book that I have ever started as an adult! Needless to say, it is very, very rare when I'll begin watching a film and not finish.

They're both just wonderful art forms, and I cherish them perhaps equally.

[DonRocks]

One of the saddest things I've ever read was on page 342, when Louie's sister Syvia innocently played for him the recording he was forced to make in Japan under coercion (saying he was a POW, but he was okay), and his reaction to hearing it. This was, needless to say, the first obvious sign that "all was not well."