Book Review: Unbroken

     I am currently in my junior year of High School, and one of the classes I am taking requires me to read books off the AP Scholarly list and the book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand happened to be on there. I had heard good reviews of the book from my teacher and fellow classmates about so I thought I would give it a go. The last book I had read off of the list was; The Scarlett Letter, and let me just say that I have never read a more boring/ ranting book ever, so yeah, my hopes were not very high to read anything else off the that list. Warning, there will be many spoilers.



Louie Zamperini

     The book Unbroken is basically about a man who was a very rebellious child and when he discovered running, he turned all of that rebellious effort into effort to succeed in running. Louie Zamperini then went onto compete in the Berlin Olympics and did very well in it. Though once WWII started, Louie had to stop his running career and become a bomber for the United States Air Force and then eventually became a POW (prisoner of war) in Japan. I found it really interesting to read about how nobody liked Louie as a child but once he started to put his talent of running into good use, people loved him. Then when he went to the Air Force to fight, people would remember what good of a runner he was and how it was a shame he had to stop.



Louie on the right competing

     There are so many things that happened in this book, but the one thing that stood out the most for me was not his amazing running career, or his rebellious childhood, it was how he survived 47 days on a raft with two other people. Those three men had chocolate, water, fishing equipment and the clothes are their backs to survive off on that boat. The whole time those three men were out there they had to find a way to capture rain water to drink, how to catch fish, keep the sharks from eating them, avoid Japanese shooters in helicopters and survive a typhoon! Not only living on a raft for 47 days, on the 47th day, they were captured by the Japanese and taken to multiple POW where they were beaten, given back braking labor, and fed inedible scraps of food, and also tormented by the guards. It was truly heartbreaking to read about how all of these men were treated and tormented.

Louie with his B24 plane

     Throughout Louie's time in being a POW, it was crazy how many times he avoided death. The first POW camp Louie was sent to was Kwajalein , the nickname for the camp was "the death camp". Louie went through experiments and testing's, usually after being interviewed and tested on, the people are sent to their death but Louie was sent to another camp. I believe he was sent to another camp and saved was because of his background as the famous Berlin Olympics runner. They later tried to use him as propaganda for Japan.



Louie reuniting with his family after being rescued

Laura Hillenbrand; Author

     Unbroken, seem like a history book, and usually that turns people away immediately, but let me tell you, this is not a history book. This book is about a man grew up with exceptional skills and then had survive multiple POW camps, it is a journey of how Louie Zamperini did not give up on life because it was too hard and unfair, it showed how strong a person can be. This book made me cheer for joy and it made me disgusted with human beings, your emotions will go from the happiest they can be to the most disgust you have ever experienced. I recommend this book for anyone, it is truly life changing and eye opening. I know I missed a lot of parts of the book, and that is because there is so much going on, and I could write for hours about it but I'm not. If you have not read the book, please give it a read, you will not regret it.
    
**all images were provided by Google