Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand

"Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man’s soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it." Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand

I've never had as much positive feedback from a book I've recommended to friends and family as I have with this one. I've told a few people I was reading it and how much I was enjoying it and the result has been overwhelming. People come up to me at church and show me their copies or tell me how many days they let their life go to pot because they couldn't put it down. My family members are all reading it. Everybody seems to love this book. And why not? It reads like a novel, but one which would be deemed too lacking in credibility if it were fiction. For athletes, it's an amazing story of what long distance track and field was like when runners were some of the biggest names in sports, before the 4 minute mile had been broken, when collegians would intentionally spike a competitor to keep him out of a race, and when the voyage to the Olympic Games was more fun than being there. For aviation buffs, it's a story of what it was like to fly the planes America might have rushed into production a little too quickly to really ensure they were all airworthy. For WWII historians, it details what it was like to be sitting in a POW Camp in Japan (where 37% of American soldiers would perish, as opposed to only 1% held prisoner in Germany), under unspeakable conditions, but take hope in the realization of how well the war must be going by the sheer number of Flying Fortresses which began to sail unimpeded across the Japanese skies. For people of faith, it contains one of the most dramatic Christian conversion and turnaround stories committed to print since Saul was waylaid on the road to Damascus, as the book's hero recovers from what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder, and remembers a promise he made in the middle of the Pacific, to turn his life over to God.

This book has so many natural readers, it will likely become more than just a bestseller, but a phenomenon, and an inevitable movie, with the name Louis Zamperini becoming a household name. And deservedly so. I want all of my children to read it. They need to know this history, and this man's story.