num_pages: 475
description: 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 lieutenants 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.
language: English
title: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption
publisher: Random House