1. “Decision Points,” by George W. Bush. (Crown, $35.) The former president’s memoir discusses his Christianity; his drinking; his family relationships; and Sept. 11, Iraq and Katrina.
2. “Unbroken,” by Laura Hillenbrand. (Random House, $27.) An Olympic runner’s story of survival as a prisoner of the Japanese in World War II. We must read this.3. “America by Heart,” by Sarah Palin. (Harper/HarperCollins, $25.99.) The former vice-presidential candidate reflects on family, faith and patriotism.
4. “Broke,” by Glenn Beck and Kevin Balfe. (Threshold/Mercury Radio Arts, $29.99.) The Fox News host’s plan for fixing the country financially seeks to unite Americans around the concept of shared sacrifice.
5. “Pinheads and Patriots,” by Bill O’Reilly. (Morrow/HarperCollins, $27.99.) The Fox News commentator scrutinizes the meaning of change in the era of Obama.
6. “Colonel Roosevelt,” by Edmund Morris. (Random House, $35.) The third and concluding volume of Morris’s monumental biography of Theodore Roosevelt.
7. “Washington,” by Ron Chernow. (Penguin Press, $40.) A biography of the first president.
8. “Spoken From the Heart,” by Laura Bush. (Scribner, $30.) A memoir from the former first lady.
9. “The Big Short,” by Michael Lewis. (Norton, $27.95.) The people who saw the real estate crash coming and made billions from their foresight.
10. “All the Devils Are Here,” by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera. (Portfolio/Penguin, $32.95.) Two business journalists examine the financial crisis of 2008.
"Eight years ago, an old man told me a story that took my breath away. His name was Louie Zamperini, and from the day I first spoke to him, his almost incomprehensibly dramatic life was my obsession.
It was a horse--the subject of my first book, Seabiscuit: An American Legend--who led me to Louie. As I researched the Depression-era racehorse, I kept coming across stories about Louie, a 1930s track star who endured an amazing odyssey in World War II. I knew only a little about him then, but I couldn’t shake him from my mind. After I finished Seabiscuit, I tracked Louie down, called him and asked about his life. For the next hour, he had me transfixed.
Growing up in California in the 1920s, Louie was a hellraiser, stealing everything edible that he could carry, staging elaborate pranks, getting in fistfights, and bedeviling the local police. But as a teenager, he emerged as one of the greatest runners America had ever seen, competing at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he put on a sensational performance, crossed paths with Hitler, and stole a German flag right off the Reich Chancellery. He was preparing for the 1940 Olympics, and closing in on the fabled four-minute mile, when World War II began. Louie joined the Army Air Corps, becoming a bombardier. Stationed on Oahu, he survived harrowing combat, including an epic air battle that ended when his plane crash-landed, some six hundred holes in its fuselage and half the crew seriously wounded.
On a May afternoon in 1943, Louie took off on a search mission for a lost plane. Somewhere over the Pacific, the engines on his bomber failed. The plane plummeted into the sea, leaving Louie and two other men stranded on a tiny raft. Drifting for weeks and thousands of miles, they endured starvation and desperate thirst, sharks that leapt aboard the raft, trying to drag them off, a machine-gun attack from a Japanese bomber, and a typhoon with waves some forty feet high. At last, they spotted an island. As they rowed toward it, unbeknownst to them, a Japanese military boat was lurking nearby. Louie’s journey had only just begun.
That first conversation with Louie was a pivot point in my life. Fascinated by his experiences, and the mystery of how a man could overcome so much, I began a seven-year journey through his story. I found it in diaries, letters and unpublished memoirs; in the memories of his family and friends, fellow Olympians, former American airmen and Japanese veterans; in forgotten papers in archives as far-flung as Oslo and Canberra. Along the way, there were staggering surprises, and Louie’s unlikely, inspiring story came alive for me. It is a tale of daring, defiance, persistence, ingenuity, and the ferocious will of a man who refused to be broken.
The culmination of my journey is my new book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. I hope you are as spellbound by Louie’s life as I am.".
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