Guest review: 'Unbroken' unbelievably good

By Wesley Roth

This is one of the BEST books that I have read in the past couple years.  It is THAT good. "Unbroken" tells the story of Louie Zamperini, who has lived a life so incredible that is hard to believe.

Passport photo to 1936 Olympics

Author Laura Hillenbrand takes the reader on a journey from Zamperini's roots in Torrance, California, to his discovered passion for running, to the Olympics in 1936 and to War in the Pacific. The chapters on the three men and their survival at sea for 47 days is astonishing. Swept into the arms of the Japanese during WWII, the brutal conditions of the POW camps were hard to wrap my mind around. The chapters on the brutality and savagery that our men went through were difficult to read.

You will get to know "The Bird" and his hatred for Zamperini. But victory never tasted so sweet when the POW camps were finally liberated more than half-way through the book. The reader's heart jumps for joy with the liberation and the immediate post-WWII years for Louie. But it quickly turns to utter heartbreak as a PTSD-affected Zamperini confronts life after war and being a "top POW" of the Japanese (who was battered and beaten within inches of his life, but never broken). But the most powerful of human emotions, REDEMPTION, is revealed to the reader at the end of the book and the start of the rest of his life.

I can't recommend this book more and encourage everyone to take the time to read about Louie Zamperini's story of "Survival, Resilience and Redemption!"

From Assist News Service:

His wife Cynthia suspected something was terribly wrong, because Zamperini often woke up in a cold sweat, shouting. One night he dreamed he was strangling The Bird. In fact, he was on top of his pregnant wife with his hands around her neck, choking the life out of her. “I woke up and couldn’t believe it,” he says. 

His life spiraled downward as he began to chase other women at local bars, where he and his Olympic buddies often got free drinks. “I began to fall apart,” Zamperini recalls. “My wife decided she wanted a divorce.”

About that time, a new couple in their apartment building talked about a young evangelist preaching in a large tent in downtown Los Angeles. “In those days ‘evangelist’ was a dirty word because there were so many crooked ones,” Zamperini notes.

The young evangelist was Billy Graham ...