Guest Reviewer Tim Hurlbert

Today, Tim Hurlbert, an extraordinary World History and Geography teacher at AHS, is contributing to the blog. As he read the book, Unbroken, for our staff book club and can give a much better perspective on it than I can, I thought that he would be a great guest post author. Thank you Mr. Hurlbert for your wonderful and unique post!

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival

Let me preface this review by noting that while I do teach history and a lot of what I teach I do find fascinating, there are undoubtedly aspects about the subject that bore me to tears. I am not one to sit around and watch the History channel and while I have read the occasional work of non-fiction, it’s a rarity if I complete these books from cover to cover. I have found that I don’t have the patience for a slow-moving book and I have no hesitation in stopping 100 pages in to pursue something else. Unfortunately non-fiction works on the American Revolution, the colonization of Africa, Lewis and Clark, Gandhi, and World War I have met this fate with me. So, with a little bit of trepidation, the glowing reviews about the book convinced me that this was a book that would hold my attention to the end and therefore I purchased it during the Christmas holidays.

The book revolves around the astounding life of one Louis Zamperini – athlete and war hero extraordinaire. The author takes the reader on a journey of the uncommon life – the Olympic hero, the left-for-dead plane crash survivor, the tortured P.O.W., the survivor- and does so in a way that managed to keep my attention throughout the book’s 500 pages. This WWII classic reads like fiction and while many of the stories are almost too impossible to believe, the book is a work of non-fiction with nearly every detail cited and accounted for.

Naturally, I found Zamperini’s experiences floating in the Pacific Ocean surrounded by sharks for 47 days (47 DAYS!!) the most interesting and inspiring part of the book and the quote that kept coming to mind as I read these pages was one by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” The events he goes through and the obstacles he encounters are unbelievable and I know that rehashing some of these events wouldn’t do Zamperini any justice. I encourage you to find out for yourself – you won’t be disappointed!

Throughout the course of reading 500 pages there is bound to be a lull in the story and while I found Zamperini’s P.O.W. experiences interesting, I feel that the author could have cut some of the details out as I found her almost repeating the experiences the book’s main character faced on a daily basis. Admittedly, I struggled to get through some of this and while I thought about skipping ahead, I couldn’t bare to do it. I was invested in the character – his struggles were my struggles – and I had to see him through his trials.

Overall, this is one of the best books I have read in a long time and I hope others take a chance on it. I know that fiction readers may hesitate at another boring work of history, but as mentioned above, it is a story that could very easily be a work of fiction and therefore reads like it. A 500 page book may be a little daunting for any reader but it contains everything anyone would ever want in a good story – triumph, tragedy, and the triumph of the human spirit.