David's Reviews > The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

What a hodge-podge mix of interesting and at other times dull events! The book jacket calls it "breathtaking" and I've not found that yet. It also says it's a "suspenseful tale of triumph" and I haven't found the suspense yet. The back jacket terms it "riveting" and I haven't found that yet. Turns out that about 60% through the story, the author kicks it in. The last of 4 sections picks up the pace and is a fine telling of an interesting story, and it becomes a fascinating tale of strategy, strength, dedication, boat construction and superior coaching - a total synthesis which produced champions.

Indeed, though the title tells us that it deals with the 9 boys in the Washington shell, as pictured on the front cover, the author tells a lot about Joe Rantz, some about Shorty Hunt, a bit about Roger Morris, then in the last of four sections we learn the others were made up of different UW students, including coxswain Bobby Moch. Brown dedicates the book "for" the nine, whose lives and careers and deaths he summaries in a very fine Epilogue.

OVERALL, the book lacks a clear focus, thereby seeming disjointed, mixing significant events with the trivial or irrelevant. For instance, there are 2 pages devoted to a "cyclonic windstorm" (which had nothing to do with the sculling). And 20 pages are devoted to the famous German movie-maker Leni Riefenstahl and asserting that Goebbels propositioned her on his knees (which had nothing to do even indirectly with the boys in the boat). And such other irrelevances as that a Seattle hockey team defeated the Montreal Canadians many decades ago. And that the "Black Sunday in the Plains blew away twice the amount of soil that had been excavated from the Panama Canal." Also extensive reconstruction details for the Berlin Olympics stadium, far from where the crew races were to be held. Other examples of which there are hundreds:- Before sailing to Europe, the boys visited Loew's State Theatre for Duke Ellington "under the theater's huge Czech-crystal chandelier, sitting in red-plush theater seats and surrounded by gilded woodwork, they listened entranced as Ellington and his orchestra lilted through Mood Indigo [as author Brown continues naming all the pieces] and Joe basked in the bright, brassy music, soaking it in as it washed over him, feeling it swing him". Irrelevant to the rowing story? It adds "color," and such extraneous journalistic flourishes throughout the book must add over 100 pages of extraneous interest to the core history of the boys and their singular rowing experiences and victories.

The best parts are about the sport of rowing sculls of which there is a lot of lore and technical information given here. (Thus I give the book 3 instead of 2 stars.) On this aspect of rowing, the author did well in portraying master craftsman George Pocock who emigrated from England to Canada and settled in Seattle to market his extraordinary skills as boat-maker - with the author giving us a lot of fine technical info. Even Pocock's use of Sperm whale oil on the shell underside before the final winning Olympic race. All ll chapters begin with a relevant quotation from Mr. Pocock, from a 1987 biography of Pocock. And, indeed almost 'riveting', the few scull races which these 9 boys won in Seattle, Oakland, Poughkeepsie, and then a different set of nine at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin were remarkable extraordinary athletic feats worthy of book treatment.

As a book about a notable slice of sporting history, this book may be compared to Doris Kearns Goodwin's 1998 "Wait Till Next Year" and Laura Hillenbrand's 2001 book "Seabiscuit" - though in my comparison this book comes in at best a very weak third.

With the paperback running to 404 pages, one wonders if it might have been more "riveting" if reduced to 300 or 250 pages. Does this book deserve an index running to 12 pages in small point type? Fortunately the publisher reduced in excess of a thousand endnotes to a mere 15 pages to save us from further ennui. One might wonder if this would have been greatly improved if Penguin Books had spent money on a major editing job to greatly improve its quality.