Grueling and worth it

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
by Laura Hillenbrand

Call me faint of heart, but for first time in an audiobook, I actually had to skip forward a few times.

Let me explain.  This is the true story of Louie Zamperini, an Olympic mile runner and air force bombardier who ended up a captive of the Japanese during World War II.  That much too much isn't telling, is it?  It would be on the book cover.  The story begins with his boyhood pranks, so numerous and flamboyant that in another time and place he might have been arrested for juvenile delinquency.  During the first few chapters, you also learn then that this author, Laura Hillenbrand, likes the detail.  (I won't call it minutia, it's not the kind of detail like the exact brand name of each pack of cigarettes he stole, but it is: each pack of cigarettes he stole.)

I'm not exaggerating much.  It was entertaining to hear, for a few hours, but then you just wanted her to get on with the story.  So when the bad stuff started happening and she was relating the daily, sometimes hourly, episodes of beatings, humiliation, and senseless violence he endured at the hands of his Japanese guards, I could only take so much of it.  I either had to turn the player or skip forward a little in time.  Not much, but enough to keep me sane.

The book explains a little of the mystery of how, after so much hatred and suffering and watching people die, the Americans and Japanese because strong allies and trading partners. Part of the push came from the Cold War and fear of communism, but not all. We need to study this phenomenon; learn from it; reproduce it.  It's our only hope.