The Boys in the Boat

I'm not big on “American sports team demonstrates the superiority of American society by beating sports team of fascist/communist country” stories, but I enjoyed this book. It focuses on the personal stories of a few of the characters while giving a really interesting social history of the sport of rowing. It delves a bit into the concern some Americans felt about participating in the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the propaganda machine that Germany put in place to present themselves in a good light to the rest of the world. A more prominent focus of this book, though, is the assumption that most people had that the best rowing teams were elite, Eastern sons of bankers and senators, and the condescension that the Washington team faced as Western sons of fisherman, farmers and lumberjacks. Even though I knew the conclusion of the story, the journey to get there was gripping.