Tag Archives: louis zamperini

Book Review: Devil at My Heels

Louis Zamperini with David Rensin
Harper Collins, 2003 (2011)

Devil at My Heels is the updated autobiography of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic athlete, B-24 bombardier, POW, and Christian. It seems most people come upon the book by first finding Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken, the biography of the same man published around the same time.

Unsurprisingly, much of the text is the same.  It is, after all, the same man’s true story.  The stories are generally identical, though told in slightly different ways.  As noted in the review of Unbroken, Zamperini’s story there is a well told narrative but lacks Read more

Book Review: Unbroken

Laura Hillenbrand
Random House, 2010

Unbroken, A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption is the story of Louis Zamperini — an Olympic athlete, B-24 bombardier, POW, and Christian.

Zamperini is famous as the man who many believed “could have” beaten the 4-minute mile in the 1940s.  At 19, he qualified for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, even getting to shake Hitler’s hand after a 7th place finish — in which he sprinted one of the fastest final laps ever and beat every American time by more than Read more

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