By Daniel James Brown
It tells the story of an 8 man rowing crew that won gold in the 1936 (Hitler’s) Olympics. The team came from the University of Washington and was composed of poor, working class guys. Overall, it’s a reminder of what humans are capable of in terms of work ethic and perseverance. During the Great Depression and dust bowl migration, these guys worked tough manual jobs to scrap together enough money to attend UW, where they succeeded academically while training brutally hard to race boats. The book is a verbose coverage of that. It’s interesting to consider a time when rowing received significant interest as a spectator sport. There’s also some coverage of the Nazi’s use of that Olympics as propaganda to endear the world to Germany while Germany moved toward WWII and the holocaust. Another amusing point was where the author pointed out that the major regatta in London forbid participation of rowers who worked in any form of labor roles. It would be an unfair advantage for these strong, working men, over the fancy sweater Oxford dorks who wanted to win races, but not against actual tough men.