Unbroken
by Laura Hillenbrand
The life of Louis Zamperini: Olympic runner, bomber crewman, forty-seven days on a raft, two years of brutal captivity in Japan, and a postwar collapse into alcoholism and rage ended by a religious conversion and forgiveness of his captors. Hillenbrand's research is exhaustive and her prose is clean. The most read resilience story of the century so far.
Read it if…
you want a true story of endurance that will recalibrate what you consider hard.
Skip it if…
you are sensitive to detailed depictions of cruelty; the camp chapters are unsparing.
Three things you will actually use
- Dignity can be kept when everything else is taken.
- Survival is often a decision renewed hourly.
- Forgiveness freed him where survival had not.
Do this first
Read it, then write the hardest thing you are facing and whether it is actually unbearable or merely hard.
Our verdict
Extraordinary and unforgettable.
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