Daniel James Brown's The Boys In The Boat

Daniel James Brown, author of The Boys in the Boat was born in 1951 in Berkeley, California. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in English at the University of California at Berkeley and then went on to receive a Masters from the University of California at Los Angeles. He taught writing at San Jose State University and Stanford University and eventually became a technical writer and editor. Now, he writes full-time, all narrative non-fiction. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his wife and two daughters. The Boys in the Boat is about what led the United Stated men Olympic eight-oar rowing team to the gold medal in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The story, in particular, follows Joe Rantz’ life. Joe had a …show more content…
Brown did a lot of research for this book. He went to Germany and looked at the Berlin Olympic stadium. He walked where Hitler walked, saw the Olympic regatta course, and he must have read many diaries of the boys, since most of them had died when Brown began writing the book. He had many quotes in the book from their diaries that allowed the reader to know exactly how the boys felt as they were going through the training for the Olympics. Each regatta they won, they were all so excited. Each time they practiced and did lousy they all felt it was their fault. The reader knew how each boy felt, how nervous they were before their big races. There is no bias in this book, he wrote the book to tell the amazing story of the eight boys in the rowing boat of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Each one of the boys had to grow up during the Great Depression, each struggled in some way that made them the perfect rowing team. The author did a great job telling their story. The only problem I have with the book is that it was a little slow. The author goes into great detail about almost everything including the weather and all the mechanics of the boats and rowing, what people wore, and all the types of the trees growing in the state of Washington. Some of the details was interesting, some seemed to drag just a little too long. However, it was an incredible story. The boys worked so hard to get to the Olympics and it is a great ending for

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