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Reddit mentions of Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Sentiment score: 10
Reddit mentions: 41

We found 41 Reddit mentions of Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. Here are the top ones.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
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  • WWII prisoner of war film
Specs:
ColorMulticolor
Height9.6 Inches
Length6.4 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateNovember 2010
Weight1.8 Pounds
Width1.4 Inches

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Found 41 comments on Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption:

u/Godphase3 · 235 pointsr/pics

There's a book written by the man who this facebook post is to, Marcus Luttrel, who is the sole survivor of Operation Red Wings in which Michael P. Murphy is killed. It's called Lone Survivor and though I don't necessarily agree with all the politics, it's a harrowing account of persistence and survival.

EDIT: Since I'm recommending books, anyone who has read or may be interested in Lone Survivor should read the book Unbroken about Olympic runner and WW2 bombardier Louie Zamperini's struggle for survival after being shot down over the Pacific Ocean.

u/_616_ · 26 pointsr/books

Oryx and Crake. I didn't expect to like it much but I loved it.

Edit: Just finished Unbroken which is an awesome tale of survival in WW2.

u/dblcross121 · 10 pointsr/MorbidReality

Read the book Unbroken, it's about Louie Zamperini, a US airman who's planed crashed in the Pacific. He spent six weeks surviving in a raft (which is quite a survival story itself) before being picked up by a Japanese patrol boat and sent to a POW camp for three years. It's an unbelievable story.

u/well_uh_yeah · 7 pointsr/books

Sort of off the top of my head:

Not Supernatural:

u/vertigo1083 · 7 pointsr/WTF

I think you mean Unbroken

u/paburon · 5 pointsr/japan

> "It is outrageous and reprehensible to deny what happened to Louis Zamperini.

There is plenty of documentation of cruelty towards allied prisoners if war. But, I have seen comments online that question certain details from his book, which do seem slightly exaggerated.

For example, from a non-Japanese reviewer on goodreads.com:

> Now, far be it for me to disparage war veterans, especially POWs who’ve endured the kinds of crushing abuse that Louie and his fellow service men have, but how is it that we are able to get such detailed minutia over 50 years after it all went down? I’ll bet you can’t describe the full details of the days of your wedding, your first child being born, your first car crash, your first date, getting your driver’s license, etc. These were all life-changing, and in some cases traumatic, days in your life and it’s a safe bet that most, if not all, of these events took place more recently for you than 50 years ago. Most of us remember scant bits and pieces of events and many of these memories have “drifted” from reality in our fallible brains. Even polling spectators who were there at the time and cobbling together all of the recollections won’t make for a fully fleshed-out memory. This thought kept rattling around my brain as I made my way through the book. How on earth could these things be recalled so clearly and precisely after all that time? I’ve read other POW accounts that say that all days start to blur together and the extreme horrors the soldiers endured are blocked out of memory. Some soldiers, as Hillenbrand herself says in the book, forget the war entirely. The sneaking suspicion (and you can’t help but feel like a total shit for thinking it) is that a lot of the filler put in the book to string the anecdotes together is fabricated to puff up the story to appeal to a broader audience.

> These suspected filler bits are nothing compared to some of the fantastical events scattered throughout the book. Zemperini is cheapened and the readers are dared not to roll their eyes as he is elevated from a man to a superhuman demi-god. He can withstand plane crashes, hourly beatings for over a year, prolonged starvation, backbreaking physical labor, diseases, and anything else that can be dished out. Consider his scenes of fist-fighting sharks in open water, meeting Hitler after his Olympic race, running a 4:12 mile -- in the fucking sand(!!), surviving violent dysentery for weeks on end with only scant handfuls of polluted water to drink (not to mention the “death sentence” disease beriberi that was left untreated), blacking out as he’s tangled in wires in his sinking bomber only to wake up untangled and able to swim freely to the surface, self-repairing a broken nose and leg while at prison camp, and living through 40+ days at sea with practically no water or food then having the patience to wait offshore overnight once he reaches an island -- of course, just in time for a typhoon to hit them in their raft, no less. These personal achievements are apart from his sufferings in a group setting like enduring over 220 punches in the face during one camp thrashing and moving 20 – 30 tons (yes, TONS -- 40,000 to 60,000 U.S. pounds) of material at a rail yard in a day. Why the author stopped there and didn’t throw in a cage match with a couple of T-Rexes I’m not sure.

And Another:

> I found Unbroken to largely be a hyperbolic and sensationalized rendering of a true story. Yes, I believe there is truth lurking among the pages but ultimately it was a poorly written fish tale. I mean no disrespect to Louis Zamperini (he passed away just as I finished the book) or the other men detailed, I think ultimately the issues lie with the author.

And another:

> so 3 guys are drifting in a raft, then are being strafed by a japanese bomber, the main character goes over the side and fights off dozens of sharks by baring his teeth and using his hands. this happens 4 times. after the bomber departs the sharks start jumping out of the water to attack the men in the raft. really Hillenbrand? plus you would think the main character was a cross between einstein and macgyver with all the ingenius tricks he comes up with. im not sure if this was a non-fiction book or science fiction

And another:

> It reads like a book you might find only sold in a church bookstore. I'm sure Zamperini was a dedicated individual but some of the stuff is just over the top. They shot down three Zero fighters while wounded in their heavily damaged plane? Do we have any independent confirmation? He killed sharks with his bare hands? A whole third of this book is a litany of beatings, starvation rations, and mistreatment. Oh, and of course his mother knew he was alive the whole time because of that special sixth sense that all mothers have. Then, tortured by his experience, he becomes a raging alcoholic, only to be saved after hearing Billy Graham speak. He immediately pours out his alcohol and dedicates his life to saving troubled kids. Just one maudlin cliche after another

From Amazon:

> There is no way an individual -- especially a frail, sick, malnourished, fever-ridden individual -- can absorb 220 successive hard blows to the head and not end up with severe brain damage, if not death.


I tend to avoid pop history books, so I admittedly haven't read it. Still, it appears one doesn't need to be a raving Japanese nationalist to feel like the book goes a bit overboard. Especially when it is based mainly on largely unverifiable personal recollections recorded half a century after the fact. It looks like the book's tendency to exaggerate is going to distract Japanese viewers from accepting the reality of large scale abuse of prisoners.

u/Tweeeked · 5 pointsr/running

Link to the man: an Olympic track athlete, POW, and all-around inspiration.

Link to the book.

u/disputing_stomach · 5 pointsr/booksuggestions

Unbroken by Laurel Hillenbrand is fantastic. The book is really a biography of Louis Zamperini and is not solely about being a POW, but a large portion of the book is his experience as a POW during WWII in Japan.

u/Jpf123 · 3 pointsr/ww2

For a higher calling. It's not just about the encounter but about the life of both the German and U.S flight crew leading up to and in the war.

"Four days before Christmas 1943, a badly damaged American bomber struggled to fly over wartime Germany. At its controls was a 21-year-old pilot. Half his crew lay wounded or dead. It was their first mission. Suddenly, a sleek, dark shape pulled up on the bomber’s tail—a German Messerschmitt fighter. Worse, the German pilot was an ace, a man able to destroy the American bomber in the squeeze of a trigger. What happened next would defy imagination and later be called the most incredible encounter between enemies in World War II. This is the true story of the two pilots whose lives collided in the skies that day—the American—2nd Lieutenant Charlie Brown, a former farm boy from West Virginia who came to captain a B-17—and the German—2nd Lieutenant Franz Stigler, a former airline pilot from Bavaria who sought to avoid fighting in World War II.

A Higher Call follows both Charlie and Franz’s harrowing missions. Charlie would face takeoffs in English fog over the flaming wreckage of his buddies’ planes, flak bursts so close they would light his cockpit, and packs of enemy fighters that would circle his plane like sharks. Franz would face sandstorms in the desert, a crash alone at sea, and the spectacle of 1,000 bombers each with eleven guns, waiting for his attack. Ultimately, Charlie and Franz would stare across the frozen skies at one another. What happened between them, the American 8th Air Force would later classify as “top secret.” It was an act that Franz could never mention or else face a firing squad. It was the encounter that would haunt both Charlie and Franz for forty years until, as old men, they would search for one another, a last mission that could change their lives forever."

and

Unbroken as all too often, the book is a thousand times better than the movie. Same for this book it doesn't just talk about the incident and what happened after but there's some really interesting contextualization that helps you empathize with the characters.

"On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane's bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.

The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he'd been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.

Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will."

​

If you at all like aviation you'll love either of these books.

u/dirtygonzo · 3 pointsr/suggestmeabook

Don't think you can go wrong with Unbroken. A best seller, it's a "military story" more or less, but more importantly about personal growth, resilience and gives the reader a different prospective of life afterwards.

u/electric_oven · 3 pointsr/booksuggestions

I have mostly nonfiction recommendations, but hope the following are of some use to you! I used these in my classroom in the past year with much success.

I can edit and add more fiction later when I get home, and look over my bookshelf as well.

World War II


"In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin" by Erik Larsen - highly recommend, especially if you are familiar with Larsen's previous book, The Devil in White City


"The Monuments Men" by Robert M. Edsel - highly recommended, especially if you are interested in the juxtaposition of art, war, and espionage.

"Unbroken" - by Laura Hillenbrand, highly recommended. Hillenbrand's command of the language and prose coupled with the true story of Louis makes this a compelling read. Even my most reluctant readers couldn't put this done.

Vietnam War

"The Things They Carried" and "If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up, and Ship Me Home" by Tim O'Brien are quintessential war canon. Must reads.

Iraq/Afghanistan/Modern Military Operations:
"The Yellow Birds" by Kevin Powers was called "the modern AQOTWF" by Tom Wolfe. Pretty poignant book. Absolute MUST READ.


u/[deleted] · 2 pointsr/Random_Acts_Of_Amazon

What a wonderful contest! it's hard to pick my favorite book. I'd say it's a tie between Into the Wild and Unbroken. They're both non-fiction (which isn't generally what I prefer, strangely enough).

Into the Wild is a story about a young man who abandons everything material in his life and goes to live in the Alaskan wild. It's wonderfully captivating. I highly recommend it. There was a movie based off of the book, as well.

Unbroken is a story about a WWII POW (who is still alive!) and his experiences. It reads like a fiction book, which makes it even more amazing that it's all true.

Good luck finding a new book, and thanks for the contest! And if reddit raffle sees me fit, my WL is at your disposal :)

u/toadog · 2 pointsr/pics

I don't have time to read all the comments, but if anyone is interested in reading what was like to be on a plane fighting in the Pacific in WWII read

"Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand

(http://www.amazon.com/Unbroken-World-Survival-Resilience-Redemption/dp/1400064163/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333913387&sr=1-1)

You can read the first chapter free on Amazon. I guarantee you will be hooked. There is a reason the men who fought that war are revered.

u/samhend · 2 pointsr/videos

It's certainly possible. I would suggest you look up the story of Louis Zamperini, he and another man survived almost 47 days at sea during World War II with few rations and no water. Wikipedia link and a book written about him.

u/shesautomatic · 2 pointsr/booksuggestions

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand is the best one I've read so far. Nonfiction account of an American bombardier in WW2, built with superb writing and an almost unbelievable story.

u/causticwonder · 2 pointsr/books

Unbroken. It's phenomenal. Basically a plane crashes and the survivors are forced to try to survive on a raft for an indeterminate amount of time. Great story of resiliency.

Flags of our Fathers. The book before the miniseries. Also phenomenal.

If you like really really detailed historical accounts, you can't do much better than The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich although I would probably recommend the audio version. It's available through audible. I got about half way through it before I had to stop, but man, it was detailed. DETAILED. If you ever wanted to know the minutiae of Hitler's daily life in part, this is it.

A memoir from a female perspective, perhaps? Well, A Woman in Berlin is your book. It's harrowing. There are things talked about here that most history books gloss over.

u/metssuck · 2 pointsr/AskMen

Unbroken is the most recent book that I've read, it's fantastic!

http://www.amazon.com/Unbroken-World-Survival-Resilience-Redemption/dp/1400064163

u/matt314159 · 1 pointr/AskReddit

Flags of our Fathers

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

Both books moved me to tears while reading, and clung to my mind for weeks after.

u/comedygene · 1 pointr/news

Unbroken. Great book.

u/Brettweiser · 1 pointr/books

Unbroken is great. It non-fiction that reads like fiction. So good!

http://www.amazon.com/Unbroken-World-Survival-Resilience-Redemption/dp/1400064163

u/C-Rock · 1 pointr/books

For biography - Unbroken. For only having two books under her belt Laura Hillenbrand is a great biographer. I also highly recommend Seabiscuit. She does a great job of recreating the time and place. Unbroken is an incredible story about an incredible man's life. Amazing he made it through with his humanity intact.

u/OatSquares · 1 pointr/movies

this story has nothing on the movie they could make of Unbroken: http://www.amazon.com/Unbroken-World-Survival-Resilience-Redemption/dp/1400064163

u/tartfacepowers · 1 pointr/AskReddit

http://www.amazon.com/Unbroken-World-Survival-Resilience-Redemption/dp/1400064163 I listened to this during my night shifts and was so drawn into it I'd listen to it on the way home from work. I also felt shitty about how easy I have it in life afterwards.

u/aginorfled · 1 pointr/books

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Not only the best I read this year, but easily the best I've read in the past five years.

u/araq1579 · 1 pointr/AskReddit

The hivemind reccomends: Unbroken. awww yiss. I was reading a snippet while at the bookstore last night. it's a good read.

u/mywholelifeisthundr · 1 pointr/books

Unbroken, By Laura Hillenbrand. One of the best and most amazing true stories I've ever read. Read it before the movie comes out!

u/watkykjynaaier · 1 pointr/TaiLopez

The book you're looking for is called "Unbroken", by Laura Hillenbrand. You can buy it here.

u/bh28630 · 1 pointr/reddit.com

For anyone interested in a similar and quite extraordinarily well written, thoroughly documented story of WWII, may I suggest Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. The book will confirm everything The0 states and add even more insight both to the war and it's aftermath effect on the POWs like "Edmund and Hap".

u/pyrelic · 1 pointr/booksuggestions

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit, is the story of a World War II American P.O.W. It's very well written and gave me a whole new perspective of how World War II was from the Japanese perspective. I'd also go with Into the Wild, which Captain suggested. I love that book.

u/Gaelige · 1 pointr/AskReddit

If you've read the book Unbroken you should understand why i cringe whenever i hear the name Watanabe. If you haven't... Do

u/notonredditatwork · 1 pointr/books

I forgot, I have also started Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Read by Stephen Fry), and it is well done as well.
I remembered a couple more that I liked:

Unbroken - good (true) story about WWII pilot who was captured by the Japanese

Water for Elephants - Good book (fiction) about a circus in the depression era

Anathem - I really like Neal Stephenson, and this was a good book, but it was very long, and I'm sure I would have had a much harder time if I had to read it, instead of just listen to it

Eye of the World (Wheel of Time Book 1) - Good book, but very long and if it weren't for the different voices by the narrator, I would have gotten lost pretty easily.

Hope this helps, and hope you find some good ones!

u/myrealnamewastakn · 1 pointr/todayilearned

American POW held by japanese survival - 67%
German POW held by American survival - 98.85%
source

Yeah, you know, pretty close conditions.

I read Unbroken the awesomest real WWII story ever. If they made it a movie it would be completely unbelievable. Complete with jumping in and out of a life raft avoiding great white sharks and eating their livers (apparently the only edible portion) after punching them to death and THEN surviving Japanese death camps.

u/zabloosk · 1 pointr/suggestmeabook

The movie just covers the war stuff, but especially if you don't care for war stories, the book is a full portrait of the man, warts and all. It made me cry.

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand