\u201cLaura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit<\/em>\u201d is exactly what the front cover says, marketing the book based on the author\u2019s reputation and extra name recognition from having had the prior book made into a movie.\u00a0 But you know what?\u00a0 I read Seabiscuit<\/em> and thought it was very well written, and this book is, too.<\/p>\n The subtitle is \u201cA World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption\u201d and unlike my prior \u201cfrom the library\u201d posts, I\u2019m not going to give a detailed synopsis of the book (I know, I still have to finish Overtreated<\/em>).\u00a0\u00a0 The book tells the story of Louis Zamperini, college track star drafted into the Air Force and shot down over the Pacific Ocean.\u00a0 As the subtitle says, he survives \u2014 but in the meantime, his fate is pretty horrific.\u00a0 (They won\u2019t be making a movie out of this one, at least not without a lot of sugarcoating.)\u00a0 But between the events themselves and Hillenbrand\u2019s skill at researching and retelling them, this was a \u201ccan\u2019t put it down\u201d sort of book of the sort I haven\u2019t read in a long time.<\/p>\n (I don\u2019t really get into fiction \u2014 periodically I\u2019ll pre-screen a book my kids are about to read, or occasionally have one land in my lap, but generally I find it to not be compelling since I know that it\u2019s all, well, fictitious.)<\/p>\n It\u2019s the sort of subject matter that, in the hands of a lesser\u00a0author, would be turned into a first-person treatment (\u201cLouis Zamperini with Laura Hillenbrand\u201d) with large print and lots of photographs.\u00a0 But that\u2019s one of my pet peeves.\u00a0 (I\u2019d like every such \u201cfirst person\u201d narrative to have a disclaimer:\u00a0 \u201cthe subject sat for lengthy interviews and provided feedback for the ghostwriter\u2019s text but didn\u2019t actually write a single word,\u201d for instance.\u00a0 And a book I read a very long time ago, A Mother\u2019s Ordeal: One Woman\u2019s Fight Against China\u2019s One Child Policy<\/em>, about forced abortion in China, told in first-person format from the vantage point of a woman first enforcing, then affected by the one-child rule, did, in fact, give author credit to the actual author, Stephen W. Mosher, who said, \u201cI wrote this in the first-person because the narrative worked better that way.\u201d\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t happen any longer, I suspect.)<\/p>\n (*** After having written the above paragraph, I looked at Amazon.com to see what reviews it got, and, turns out, a reviewer linked to the book that Zamperini \u201cauthored\u201d, Devil At My Heels.\u00a0 So now I\u2019m curious about how this compares. . . )<\/p>\n Anyway, it\u2019s been given 4.8 stars on Amazon.com, and it deserves every one of them, so take a break from Syria, Obamacare, the debt ceiling, etc., and read this book.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cLaura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit\u201d is exactly what the front cover says, marketing the book based on the author\u2019s reputation and extra name recognition from having had the prior book made into a movie.\u00a0 But you know what?\u00a0 I read Seabiscuit and thought it was very well written, and this book is, too. The subtitle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n