I just finished the best book I have listened to all year. The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown. I feel like skipping straight through this book review and giving it a score now. It was that good.

Brown details the story the University of Washington crew team that put Seattle on the map in 1936, and despite some incredible setbacks, won Olympic gold in Grünau, Germany. The books weaves descriptions of life in the depression, the Nazi German government’s propaganda effort, the experience of being in a rowing shell, and the life of Joe Rantz, one of the rowers who powered America to victory.

Joe Rantz’s story is simply amazing. He was abandoned by his family at the age of 15. He pulled himself together, worked every odd job he could find from helping lay asphalt to logging massive trees to fishing and selling local salmon. He managed to make enough money to pay for part of the way through a year of college at the University of Washington, but he knew he needed a part time job. Making it on the crew team helps guarantee him this job, so he tries out, and despite the intense work, he makes the team. Over the course of the next three years, he works with his teammates and makes the varsity boat and learns to row and swing. He would go come out of his college years, along with a few of his boat-mates, with an incredible 10-0 record, having never lost a race, and won an Olympic gold medal.

In college, I served as a coxswain for four years. Later I rowed with a crew club for three years on the Potomac River. I very rarely felt a boat really swing and fly down a course, especially when I was rowing in it. But when I did, it was an amazing feeling. Rantz and his teammates found this swing. Despite being placed in a much tougher lane that faced them against much stronger opposing winds as compared to the other boats, despite getting off to a bad start, and despite having a stroke rower who was incredibly sick, this boat came from behind and in the last 200 yards of the race, overtook the Italian and German boats and won the race. I hunted down the video on youtube; the race is simply amazing to watch. I listened to the dramatic race scene while out for a run. I finished the run but the race hadn’t ended yet (the actual race only took just over 6 minutes, but takes about 15 minutes on the audible.com download). I kept running until it ended; I felt bad about finished my workout while the boys were still racing…and I wanted to hear the end of the story.

What is missing from this book: Brown also covers the intensive marketing efforts laid out by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi chief of propaganda, and Leni Riefenstahl, the filmmaker who developed a film of the entire games. The only thing I thought could be added to the book was a deeper description of the efforts by different Americans to boycott the games. Brown touches on the movement, but does not describe it in length, instead focusing on the rowing, which really is ok with me.

This book really touched me. Maybe it was the sense of pride in the American team winning, maybe it was rowing nostalgia, or maybe it was just a great story that was very well written. Score: 9.5.