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UNBROKEN Audiobook (Unbroken Audio edition): A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption [Audiobook, Unabridged] Audio CD

by Laura Hillenbrand (Author)

75,762

Editors' pick Best History

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Los Angeles Times Book PrizeWinner, 2010

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In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit. Telling an unforgettable story of a man's journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit. On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane's bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he'd been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.

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Random House Audio
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ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00B62LWCG
Language ‏ : ‎ English

Best Sellers Rank: #4,179,023 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #30,443 in Books on CD
- #35,114 in World War II History (Books)

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Laura Hillenbrand

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Laura Hillenbrand (born May 15, 1967) is an American author of books and magazine articles. Her two best-selling nonfiction books, Seabiscuit: An American Legend and Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption have sold over 10 million copies, and each was adapted for film. Her writing style is considered to differ from the New Journalism style, dropping verbal pyrotechnics in favor of a stronger focus on the story itself. Both books were written after she fell ill in college, barring her from completing her degree. She told that story in an award-winning essay, A Sudden Illness, which was published in The New Yorker in 2003. She was 28 years with Borden Flanagan, from whom she separated by 2014.

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P. Blevins

excellent

Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2020

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Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Resistance is by Laura Hillenbrand. This book is the story of POWs in Japan and about Louis Zamperani, an Olympic athlete and hero of World War II.
Louis Zamperini was born to Albert and Louise Zamperini, Italian immigrants, in Olean, New York on August 26, 1917. Second child and second son. From time he could walk, he was constantly moving and in trouble. Family moved to California when he was two. He ran from one end of train to the other, his Mother was very worried and told him someone would fall off train if he wasn’t careful. To her chagrin, he did run off the end of the train. Then, he calmly walked along tracks until train returned for him. Told his Mother, he knew she would come back for him. He was a clever, resourceful, bold child and always optimistic.
Louie idolized his older brother Pete, twenty months older. Pete was the “golden child”. He seemed to always do what was right, was respectful and courteous, and never in trouble, or so it seemed. Many times, he could be seen with Louis when he performed his pranks. He helped Pete look out for their sisters, Sylvia and Virginia.
Louis got in major trouble in California. He took to stealing, just to get away with it. He gave away everything he stole. He always got away by running. He came face-to-face with the eugenics process of sterilizing those who were different or criminals (stealing was included) when a kid from his neighborhood was said to be “feebleminded, institutionalized, and faced sterilization”. Luckily the boy’s parents were able to keep this from happening. This incident scared Louie straight, or at least he tried.
When he found a key to the gym, he sold “tickets” at a reduced price to get kids into the basketball games. When caught, the principal punished him by excluding him from sports the first year he was in high school. Pete talked to the principal and finally got him to allow Louie to play sports. This turned out to be good for Louie, he won 10 varsity letters in basketball, 3 in Baseball, and 4 in track as well as setting school records. After high school, he joined Pete at UCLA.
Pete had coached him in high school in track and continued to do so in college. Louis just got faster. In one meet, he beat the other racers by ¼ mile. He began to look towards running in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. He had to run in four races to qualify for the Olympics. In two races, he did quite well, in the third, he didn’t do as well, and he barely made it in the fourth race due to a tie; but he was on his way to the Olympics. Although he didn’t win a medal in the Olympics, he did set a record for running the last lap in 56 seconds.
When he returned to UCLA, he began training for the 1940 Olympics where it would be more than possible to win the Gold. However, the Olympics were to be held in Japan and Japan released them to Finland. Then, the Olympics were cancelled for 1940 due to WWII.
He signed up on September 29, 1941 with the Army. They sent him to Houston where they were to train him to be a bombardier. Eventually, he was assigned to a crew which would stay together for a long time and they would become best friends. Finally, he and part of his crew were sent on a rescue mission in an old plane, the Green Hornet. The plane was not in ideal condition; but it was a rescue mission. The plane was destined to crash in the ocean and of the crew, only three were to survive the crash, the pilot Phil, Mac, and Louie. Phil and Louie had flown together from the beginning. Only Phil and Louie were to survive being adrift for 47 or 48 days before being rescued by the Japanese.
Hillenberg goes on to describe in great detail Louie’s and Phil’s treatment by the Japanese during their capture and their time in the POW camps. For over two years, they languished in the camps, separated from each other. Their families were the only ones who believed they were still alive even though they never appeared on a POW list nor were allowed to write their families. Eventually, Phil did appear on a list and was able to write his family; but this was close to the end of the war. Louie was not. He had been picked out as a special whipping boy for one guard called “Bird”. Bird went out of his way to cruelly beat and pick on Louie as they went from camp to camp. She describes the POWs watching the bombing of Tokyo from their camp and the ordeal they lived even after liberation while waiting on the army to reach them. She goes on to describe Louie’s life after returning to the US and his family. She shows his problems as he attempts to return to civilian life and dealing with PSTD and his nightmares about Bird.
This book was eventually made into a movie and a version of it designed for children is also in print. The book is well-researched and documented. It is one which should be read by anyone reading about World War II.

9 people found this helpful

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Tim Challies

An Excellent Read

Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2013

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The book is always better than the movie, right? It seems that way to me, even with movies as good as the Lord of the Rings series. The movies were amazing, but the books were still better. It seems inevitable that Unbroken will appear on the silver screen before long (and, if the rumors are to be believed, it will star Nicholas Cage). Before it does, make sure you read the book. Unbroken is, in a word, amazing--easily one of the best books I read in 2010. It's written by Laura Hillenbrand who also penned Seabiscuit. This new book has shot straight to #2 on the New York Times list of bestsellers just days after its release.

Unbroken tells the tale of Louie Zamperini, a character who is so much larger than life that I can't believe I hadn't encountered him before. Zamperini grew up in California in the 1930's, a troublesome kid who was constantly stealing, constantly fighting, constantly getting into trouble. He was that kid, the kid who was known by the police, the kid who was every teacher's nightmare. He was also lightning fast, eventually becoming a member of the 1936 U.S. Olympic team where he ran the 5,000 meter race and even had the opportunity to meet Adolf Hitler.

War came in 1941 and, like so many men his age, Zamperini joined up, enlisting in the United States Army Air Force. He was made bombardier in a B-24 bomber and posted to Hawaii. He took advantage of all the world had to offer, drinking and carousing with the best (or worst) of them. On May 27, 1943, while searching the ocean for a crashed plane, his own plane suffered mechanical failure and plunged into the ocean. Zamperini survived the crash along with two other members of the crew. They were adrift in the Pacific for 47 days, living off whatever rain fell from the sky and whatever food they could somehow pluck from the ocean. Though one of the men eventually succumbed to starvation, the two who remained were eventually "rescued" by the Japanese Navy, some 2,000 miles from where the plane had crashed.

Zamperini's war was about to get far worse.

While in captivity he was treated barbarically, a human guinea pig for new medications, a punching bag for sadistic guards, a slave laborer. In one camp he fell under the eye of Sergeant Matsuhiro Watanabe, one of Japan's most notorious war criminals and a true sadist who beat Zamperini near the point of death time and time again. That he survived the camp at all is not far short of a miracle. But he did survive, right to the end of the war. Though just a shadow of the man he was before, he returned to the United States. He was consumed by hate and anger, haunted by the shadows of what he had gone through and, as with so many survivors of the Prisoner of War camps, he turned to alcohol to numb the pain. He got married but found himself turning on his wife, even physically at times, and he found himself deeper and deeper in the bottle. His life unraveled even further.

Let me pause here. If you already know that you want to read this book, just stop now and buy yourself a copy. Quit now before you come to the real spoilers. Do take note of this caveat: This may not be a book to give to your kids. There is some profanity used in dialog and there is the ugly truth that one of the Japanese prison guards was a sexual sadist who seemed to find sexual pleasure in beating and demeaning his prisoners. The sexual component of that sadism is not discussed in detail, it is not really qualified, but it is mentioned. The profanity and the sadism are historical, so not entirely out of place. But I do want to make you aware of them.

You can buy Unbroken at Amazon, in hardcover or on the Kindle. It will make a great gift for a lover of biography or a person who has an interest in history, and especially military history.

Now, for those who haven't run out to buy the book already, let me tell just a bit more about Zamperini's life.

Zamperini pretty much hit rock bottom right around the time that Billy Graham began a crusade in California. Zamperini's wife had decided to divorce him, having come to the end of her ability to put up with his drunkenness and his abuse. But a neighbor persuaded her to go to the crusade and on her first night there she got saved. Soon she and the friend persuaded Louie to come along as well. The first night he stormed out in anger. The second night he began to storm out in anger, but on his way out, turned back and responded to the altar call. He got saved too. And his life was utterly transformed. He eventually returned to Japan to preach the gospel, even sharing it with some of the men who had imprisoned and abused him.

And here he is, decades after the war, still alive, suddenly coming into the limelight once again. And here, perched near the top of the New York Times list of bestsellers, is a book that tells a story of a marvelous transformation, of God's stunning saving grace extended to one of his children. It's almost too good to be true.

What can I do but recommend this book? It is receiving near-universal acclaim and for good reason. It's an incredible story to begin with, and it only gets better as it goes along. The climax of the story is not when Zamperini is rescued or when he exacts revenge on his captors. The story hits its climax right where Zamperini is born again, where he lets go of the anger and instead finds himself overwhelmed with love, God's love, and wants nothing more but to share that love with those who hated him. It's a story that has waited a long time to be told; it's a story that just needs to be read.

6 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Incredible true story!

Reviewed in Canada on March 1, 2024

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After reading this true life story with unbelievable adversity bad suffering, you will count your blessings daily and realize you can actually survive very dire circumstances.

ezequiel tellez

Great book

Reviewed in Mexico on October 15, 2022

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I enjoyed this reading. I ended up mesmerized

Jamie L. Harding

One of the best books I’ve ever read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 7, 2024

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The story of Louis Zamperini is incredible - from his boyhood escapades to his running within the olympics to his experiences crashing into the sea as part of a bomber crew - and all that is just the beginning. Next comes trying to stay alive on a raft constantly poked at by sharks and then shot at by Japanese planes, leading to his capture and time spent enduring the horrors of being a Japanese POW. The book even goes into how he coped after the war, along with the life of the Japanese ghoul who tortured him throughout.

Hillenbrand has clearly done so much research into Zamperini’s story, with unprecedented access to his life and experiences. The descriptions genuinely bring the entire story to life. I read the whole thing in less than 4 days.

It is a fantastic book and one you absolutely will be happy you purchased.

I’m now about to read ‘Devil at my Heels’ - the same story but told through Zamperini’s own words, but I’d certainly recommend reading Hillenbrand’s book first.

Zerberus

A moment of pain is worth a lifetime of glory

Reviewed in Germany on November 7, 2020

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Finished the book in 2,5 days, the best one I've ever read to this subject.
It shows you what you can achieve with the right motivation and perseverance (Olympic runner).
And it shows you what the body is able to live through if you believe in it (unlike Mac who was sure he would die and died).

If you ever think you're going through hardship, go read this book and think again!

Rose

Magnificent, enthralling read

Reviewed in India on July 2, 2020

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I had to buy this book after seeing it was written by laura hillenbrand- Seabiscuit is still one of my favourite books ever! And hillenbrand didn't disappoint. The book takes you through the fascinating and scary life of Louis zamperini. The descriptions of his life as a flight lieutenant nd thereafter as a prisoner of war will have you glued to the book.
The beauty of hillenbrand's writing is how she converts the most mundane into interesting and gives inanimate objects personalities and characters. Her descriptions of the B24 and other fighter planes are just amazing.

7 people found this helpful

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