The Boys in the Boat -- by Daniel James Brown

 

It would be difficult to add anything to the already strong acclaim The Boys in the Boat has rightfully received. But I'll try.

Author Daniel James Brown exhibits outstanding milli-second by milli-second rowing race details rivaling and beating some of the best sportswriting ever written. His biographical work on the rowers is as good as any I have ever read, and he captured that Great Depression feeling I learned about from my grandparents extremely well. This University of Washington team in 1936 ran up incredible records on their way to the eventual Olympic Gold in front of Adolph Hitler. Now I am interested in seeing if anyone is going to write about the University of Washington's greatest rival, California, who won three national titles, which they also extended to Olympic Gold in 1928, 1932, and 1948.

If you weren't a team rowing, or crew, fan you probably will be even before finishing this book. I've seen some, including the 2002 Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge in London, but that was long before I read The Boys in the Boat.

There is a good aftertaste here. A reader learns a lot through Brown's obviously titanic effort. I appreciated all the help credits he wrote about. He interviewed one of those boys, Joe Rantz, shortly before his death in 2007, and numerous family members of the other oarsmen.

Brown's ability to capture the intensity of top-level competitive rowing, and the necessary cohesion to win really stood out for me. The wisdom of boatbuilder George Yeoman Pocock is certainly worthy of deeper focus, too. 

Brown included a quote from Pocock at the beginning of each chapter. 

"Where is the spiritual value of rowing? The losing of self entirely to the cooperative effort of the crew as a whole" was the Pocock quote going into Chapter Nineteen.

It's easy to heap praise on a really good book.

However, it was not letter-perfect. One of several videos on YouTube, this one featuring a Pocock family member, points out that George actually spelled his middle name Yeomans. Yeoman was repeated throughout the book. There were also some sentences that seemed to have escaped editing altogether. Extra words were left alone in at least three sentences...