The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

I was somewhat dubious as to whether an 80-year-old story about rowing could capture and hold my attention. I shouldn't have been: one of the more memorable books I read in the past year was The Great Match Race, which is about horse racing, for heaven's sake. Moreover, throughout Boys in the Boat, Daniel James Brown, like Match Race author Eisenberg, does a commendable of providing the larger context. The hardship of life is never far from the athletes' - or reader's - mind: these were the years in the heart of the Depression, the years of Hoovervilles and Okies - the term "Dust Bowl" was coined in the middle of the boys' rowing career, in 1935.

What Brown does exceptionally well is select one of the boys, Joe Rantz, and make Boys in the Boat, as much a biography of Rantz - whose story is amazing and inspiring - as a retelling of the quest for Olympic gold. Rantz is the heart and soul of the book; the hardships he faced and the genial way in which he faced - and overcame - them is such that the reader is drawn in immediately. I couldn't help but be sympathetic to the lonely, and ultimately abandoned, boy determined to make something of his life despite extraordinarily long odds. I was rooting for Joe long before I was rooting for the rest of his boat mates.

If there's any criticism of Boys in the Boat, it would be that the sections on 1930s Nazi Germany in the build up to the Olympics sometimes feel forced. Unlike the Deparession-era hardships which are woven neatly throughout the entire story, events in Germany are recounted in separate sections. This is probably necessary, as the rise of anti-semitism and embrace of the Olympic movement as propaganda cannot be woven into the protagonists' lives, but it does break up the flow of the Joe Rantz-University of Washington crew story.

This is a minor criticism, though, and all-in-all, The Boys in the Boat is an outstanding read. Four stars.