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The Boys in the Boat
July, 2015
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July 18, 2015 Pre-Meeting Notes
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Jun 30, 2015 03:56AM
Our book selection for July, 2015. Your comments, suggestions, reviews, character lists, author information, ....
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Author Biography"Daniel James Brown grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and attended Diablo Valley College, the University of California at Berkeley, and UCLA. He taught writing at San Jose State University and Stanford before becoming a technical writer and editor. He now writes narrative nonfiction books full time. His primary interest as a writer is in bringing compelling historical events to life vividly and accurately.
"He and his wife live in the country outside of Seattle, Washington, with an assortment of cats, dogs, chickens, and honeybees. When he isn't writing, he is likely to be birding, gardening, fly fishing, reading American history, or chasing bears away from the beehives."
From Amazon: http://smile.amazon.com/Boys-Boat-Ame...
Goodreads author entry is here, includes list and brief description of other books:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
http://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-im...
"The victory boys … Members of America's 1936 Olympic rowing team, based at the University of Washington in Seattle"
From The Guardian, July 13, 2013. Its review of the book is here:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013...
Excerpt from The Guardian, July 13, 2013:"I've always admired Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, thereby infuriating Hitler, who stormed out of the stadium after this black man from Alabama so visibly challenged Nazi fantasies of racial superiority (at least as the usual story goes; there is now some doubt). So what if a group of brawny white boys from the University of Washington managed to win a gold medal in the eight-man boat race? Their feat – however impressive – will always seem less spectacular by contrast.
"In the hands of Daniel James Brown, however, their story becomes a fine-grained portrait of the Depression era, with its economic and climatic horrors set against youthful dreams. Brown finds a representative figure in Joe Rantz, a poor boy whose determination to overcome odds make him an ideal hero. Brown learned the details of Rantz's brilliant rowing career from the athlete himself. But this story wasn't just about him; it was always about the boat: nine rangy boys – sons of farmers, fishermen, and loggers – who managed to coalesce into a rowing team that would march confidently into the 1936 Olympics under the hawkish eyes of Hitler, emerging victorious over rival crews from Germany and Italy."
Book trailer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n58w0...
Author interview (~38 minutes):
Daniel James Brown The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blb3k...
A number of other videos are available.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HunZs...A side story encountered in looking at the video options.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2003/...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNnDB...
