Hi, my name is Harrison Otis. Today I’m reviewing Daniel James Brown’s book The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the nineteen thirty-six Berlin Olympics.
In two thousand and seven, Brown was living near Seattle when one of his neighbors asked him to come meet her dying father, Joe Rantz. Rantz, it turned out, was at the time one of only two surviving members of the University of Washington eight-man crew team who had won the gold medal out from under Hitler’s nose at the nineteen thirty-six Berlin Olympics.
Brown was so inspired by meeting Rantz that he asked for permission to write a book about his story. Rantz agreed, on one condition: “Not just me,” he said. “It has to be about the boat.” So this is the story of all eight young men who rowed with Rantz in Berlin: the story of how nine working-class boys from rural Washington state overcame the pressures of the Great Depression and the prejudices of moneyed East Coast rowers to defeat the best rowing teams in Nazi Germany and the world.
Brown is a master storyteller, and each time he narrates a race it’s edge-of-your-seat exciting, even to a reader (like me) with little rowing experience. If you know your history, you that the Washington team is going to win in Berlin—but Brown never lets you take that for granted. The Washington rowers aren’t supermen; they’re inexperienced college students who have difficulty getting their act together, and who are competing against world-class talents.
Success is never certain, and Brown makes you feel all the excitement and suspense of a story whose ending hangs in the balance. But this is more than a sports story. It’s a window into American life during the Great Depression. It’s a story about Hitler’s rise to power. It’s a story of the men and women from Washington whose friendships and conflicts are the real heart of the book: the rivalry between Washington’s taciturn coach Al Ulbrickson and California’s outspoken Ky Ebright; the stabilizing presence of George Yeoman Pocock, the world’s best craftsman of racing shells, who becomes a spiritual mentor to the Washington team. Especially, it’s the story of Joe Rantz: his relationship with the family who abandoned him as a teenager and his struggle to fit in on the Washington team.
This isn’t just human interest backstory, either: the resolution of Rantz’s troubles in his personal life becomes necessary for the success of the entire team. Watching these storylines come together was for me one of the most powerful and moving aspects of the book.
Last year’s film adaptation of The Boys in the Boat hits most of the book’s major plot points but loses almost all the historical breadth and depth of character of Brown’s telling. Don’t just settle for the film: if you want a deeper appreciation for the struggles of these characters and what winning in Berlin means to them, and if you want a powerful story of how nine independent boys were forged into one team, one of the best teams in the world—then read The Boys in the Boat.