The Boys in the Boat is an amazing book. The author, Daniel James Brown,
made me interested in a sport I never cared about – rowing. I came to admire
the young men – they called themselves “boys” – who rowed to Olympic gold in
1936. I was mesmerized by the story of nine young blue collar guys with no
money, no college scholarships, and seemingly no chance, who stuck it to the
Third Reich and struck a blow for liberty, impossible dreams, and American
exceptionalism.
They rowed for the
University of Washington, but they did all of America proud. They came up when
America was down, mired in the Great Depression, with millions out of work.
Hitler’s Germany was on the rise, and the Berlin Summer Games was a propaganda colossus
engineered by Hitler and Goebbels to assure the world that Germany was no
threat to anyone.
