I know I'm way behind the times and this book was already popular and made into a movie. I have not seen the movie. But I read the book during my trip to China in February, and I found it quite fascinating.
The main idea of the book is it's the biography of Louis Zamperini, former Olympian, life boat survivor, and POW survivor. It does cover most parts of his life, but the majority of the book focuses on his experience in WWII as a prisoner of war in Japan.
The book keeps a very nice balance between keeping your interest in the personal story and covering some very interesting history about WWII. The biggest thing I learned was how brutal the POW camps in Japan were. I never imagined them to be hotels, but the description in the book basically describes concentration camp conditions where men who entered the camps weighing 180 or 200 pounds weighed 100 pounds or less by the end of the war. The other thing that amazed me is how a person can have dysentery almost continuously for several years and still be alive.
Here are a couple of my favorite passages from the book:
"The crash of Green Hornet had left Louie and Phil in the most desperate physical extremity, without food, water, or shelter. But on Kwajalein, the guards sought to deprive them of something that had sustained them even as all else had been lost: dignity. This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind. Men subjected to dehumanizing treatment experience profound wretchedness and loneliness and find that hope is almost impossible to retain. Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live."
"Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it. The loss of it can carry a man off as surely as thirst, hunger, exposure, and asphyxiation, and with greater cruelty."
On the lighter side, I learned it is possible to temporarily ward off a shark attack (if you can see him coming), and Louie actually did it. In fact, he did it more than once. I learned the most edible part of raw shark meet is the liver. Or at least that's what this book said - maybe other cultures disagree. And, many more planes went down in WWII during training or search and rescue operations than in combat.
I would definitely recommend you read the book, even if you're not a huge history buff.
