In a book club and starting to plan your reads for next year? Check out our 2025 picks.

Summary and Reviews of Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Unbroken

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

by Laura Hillenbrand
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Readers' Rating:
  • First Published:
  • Nov 16, 2010, 496 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jul 2014, 528 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About This Book

Book Summary

In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit. Telling an unforgettable story of a man's journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.

Rated The Best Book of 2011 by BookBrowse Members

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.

In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit. Telling an unforgettable story of a man's journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.

Chapter One
The One-Boy Insurgency

In the predawn darkness of August 26, 1929, in the back bedroom of a small house in Torrance, California, a twelve-year-old boy sat up in bed, listening. There was a sound coming from outside, growing ever louder. It was a huge, heavy rush, suggesting immensity, a great parting of air. It was coming from directly above the house. The boy swung his legs off his bed, raced down the stairs, slapped open the back door, and loped onto the grass. The yard was otherworldly, smothered in unnatural darkness, shivering with sound. The boy stood on the lawn beside his older brother, head thrown back, spellbound.

The sky had disappeared. An object that he could see only in silhouette, reaching across a massive arc of space, was suspended low in the air over the house. It was longer than two and a half football fields and as tall as a city. It was putting out the stars.

What he saw was the German dirigible Graf Zeppelin. At nearly 800 feet long and ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
Book Club Discussion Questions for Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

  1. Did you like the book?  Would you add it to your permanent book collection?  What do you like or not like about this book?  The story is told from the standpoint of a narrator. Why did the author choose this style to tell this story?
    |
  2.  Laura Hillenbrand also wrote the book: Seabiscuit: An American LegendThis book told a very different type of story.  Were you surprised at how different they are? 

  3. When Louie was young he was famous for stealing things.  He mostly took things to eat. Do you think he was hungry or was he doing ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!
  • award image

    Indie Booksellers’ Choice Awards
    2011

  • award image

    BookBrowse Awards
    2011

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

When a book generates as much pre-publication buzz as Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken, I tend to be a bit prejudiced against it from the start. I've found that rarely do books live up to the expectations I've developed for them based on the press they've generated. I was delighted to find, though, that Unbroken not only lives up to its hype, but far surpasses it. I can honestly say that I can't remember the last time a non-fiction book held my attention as well as this one did, from start to finish. It's the first book I've read in a very long time that I've wanted to force on all my friends. Yes, it's that good...continued

Full Review Members Only (808 words)

(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).

Media Reviews

The New York Times - Janet Maslin
And if some of it sounds too much like pulp fiction to be true, Ms. Hillenbrand has also done a bang-up research job…[Unbroken]manages to be as exultant as Seabiscuit as it tells a much more harrowing, less heart-warming story.

Kirkus Reviews
[Hillenbrand] returns with another dynamic, well-researched story of guts overcoming odds...Alternately stomach-wrenching, anger-arousing and spirit-lifting–and always gripping.

Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Hillenbrand's triumph is that in telling Louie's story (he's now in his 90s), she tells the stories of thousands whose suffering has been mostly forgotten. She restores to our collective memory this tale of heroism, cruelty, life, death, joy, suffering, remorselessness, and redemption

Booklist
[Hillenbrand's] skills are as polished as ever, and like its predecessor, this book has an impossible-to-put-down quality that one commonly associates with good thrillers.

Library Journal
Because of the author's popularity, libraries will want this book both for general readers who like a good story and for World War II history buffs; however, it's not essential reading for those who read Zamperini's autobiography, Devil at My Heels.

Reader Reviews

ahmed

Unbroken
A very good book.
Margaret Dropek

personal
The book gave me a better understanding what my husband went through in the 8th A.F. serving on a B-24 in the E.T.O. in 1943 as S.Sgt. and Chief Eng. and top turret gunner. It was a wonderfully discriptive and interesting.
Gladys

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Our lIbrary chose Unbroken for us to read in our Book group. I thought I would not be alble to read this book because my father went to WW2 & to the Korean war & I did not want to re-visit what happened during that war. I was glad that I ...   Read More
Louise J

Incredible Story!
This isn’t normally the type of book I would choose to read but something about the synopsis on the cover propelled me into buying it and I’m glad I did. This is the incredible and true story of Louis Zamperini’s survival, and redemption and the ...   Read More

Write your own review!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



Japanese Prisoners of War

Much of Unbroken relays Louis Zamperini's experiences as a Japanese prisoner of war. Hillenbrand cites staggering statistics. Zamperini was but one of approximately 132,000 POWs from the United States, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, Holland and Australia. More than a quarter of these prisoners died, including 12,935 Americans (more than 37 percent of Americans captured by the Japanese). These numbers don't include the thousands of Chinese who were murdered, nor those prisoners killed after surrender but before reaching the POW camps (for example, those who perished along the sixty-mile Bataan Death March in the Philippines). By comparison, only 1 percent of Americans held by the Nazis and Italians died during WWII.

While there ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Unbroken, try these:

  • Dadland jacket

    Dadland

    by Keggie Carew

    Published 2018

    About this book

    A spellbinding journey into surprising and shady corners of twentieth-century politics, a rackety English childhood, the poignant breakdown of a family, the corridors of dementia and beyond.

  • Midnight in Broad Daylight jacket

    Midnight in Broad Daylight

    by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto

    Published 2017

    About this book

    Alternating between American and Japanese perspectives, Midnight in Broad Daylight provides a fresh look at the dropping of the first atomic bomb.

We have 19 read-alikes for Unbroken, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Laura Hillenbrand
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: The Puzzle Box
    The Puzzle Box
    by Danielle Trussoni
    During the tumultuous last days of the Tokugawa shogunate, a 17-year-old emperor known as Meiji ...
  • Book Jacket
    Something, Not Nothing
    by Sarah Leavitt
    In 2020, after a lifetime of struggling with increasingly ill health, Sarah Leavitt's partner, ...
  • Book Jacket
    A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens
    by Raul Palma
    Raul Palma's debut novel A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens introduces Hugo Contreras, who came to the ...
  • Book Jacket
    The MANIAC
    by Benjamin Labatut
    The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut is an ambitious work that falls squarely into the category of fiction...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Libby Lost and Found
    by Stephanie Booth

    Libby Lost and Found is a book for people who don't know who they are without the books they love.

Who Said...

Being slightly paranoid is like being slightly pregnant – it tends to get worse.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

H I O the G

and be entered to win..