Erik’s Top 10 Recommended Reading
If you are looking for a terrific story about a true survival situation, then Unbroken, by Lauren Hillenbrand, is for you.
Hillenbrand tells the true story of Louis Zamperini who, while serving aboard a bomber during World War II, crashed into the Pacific while searching for another missing plane from his squadron. If spending 47 days at sea with two other surviving crew members in a life raft with no supplies wasn’t bad enough, Zamperini was then captured by the Japanese and spent the rest of the war in a series of POW camps suffering (to put it mildly) intense physical and psychological abuse. And it wasn’t just Zamperini who demonstrated the most amazing character and will to endure, but dozens of other Allied servicemen, including a handful of Japanese guards who risked much to protect them when they could.
True Stories of Survival
Why do I read such books? Besides the fact that I love to read, it is a wonderful way to learn from others who have much to teach us, including attempting to better understand that ineffable essence of survival that may one day help me during a crisis. Perhaps, also, it helps to better appreciate and enjoy life.
In any case, listed below are nine other non-fiction books with similar themes that you may enjoy. Please note that they are not in any particular order … and they definitely don’t represent the typical survival stories that one usually finds on the bookshelves.
2. Jungle – Yossi Ghinsberg
3. In the Heart of the Sea – Nathaniel Philbrick
4. Lost in Shangri-La – Mitchell Zuckoff
5. The River of Doubt – Candice Millard
6. The Children’s Blizzard – David Laskin
7. Alive – Piers Paul Reid
8. South – Earnest Shackleton
9. The Ghost Map – Steven Johnson
10 . All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Remarque
