Zamperini and his crew were flying a rattletrap B-24 called the Green Hornet - their usual aircraft was grounded for repair - to look for yet another plane that had already gone down. In May of 1943, those realities would turn Zamperini's life upside down. Once you got into the combat theaters, 36,000 airmen died in noncombat accidents.' 'Fifteen-thousand Air Corps trainees died in training, stateside. 'It was extremely deadly just to fly in these things, much less to go into combat,' Hillenbrand says. The bombers of the time had technical problems and limited navigation abilities, and as a result Zamperini was at high risk even when he wasn't in combat. Adolf Hitler took notice, and complimented him on his speed.Īfter Pearl Harbor, Zamperini would become a bombardier, serving in the Pacific theater during World War II. He eventually competed at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. And it turned out Louis had world-class, historic speed.' 'He had the one thing that a good thief has - getaway speed. He would go on to become the fastest high-school runner in history and an American record holder in the mile. When Zamperini took up track and field at the urging of his older brother, he finally had somewhere to channel his pent-up energy. Zamperini's delinquency often manifested itself in the form of theft, Hillenbrand says the kid would steal anything edible he could find, even breaking into kitchens to make off with a family's meal moments before it was to be served. 'He was a serial runaway he was a brawler he was a prankster.' 'He was the Artful Dodger of his hometown from a very early age,' Hillenbrand says. That verve would one day make him an Olympic athlete at the time, it simply made him spirited to the point of delinquency. Hillenbrand tells NPR's Scott Simon that when Zamperini was a kid in Torrance, Calif., he was known for his unbridled energy.

When a plane he is piloting disappears into the Pacific Ocean, years of starvation, imprisonment and brutality follow. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption follows Zamperini as a bombardier during World War II. Now she offers up the saga of Louis Zamperini, a former Olympic runner who became an American airman - and whose true laurels were the result of trials, endurance and will far from any stadium. The first was Seabiscuit, the tale of the Depression-era racehorse. Laura Hillenbrand has written two great big books about exceptional athletes and inspiring survivors that the world somehow managed to forget for a while.

Author of seabiscuit and unbroken