The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown

People
Joe’s family	University of Washington	Germany
Joe Rantz Harry – father Nellie – mother Fred – older brother Thelma – Fred’s wife   Thula stepmother Step-siblings: Harry Jr. Mike Rose Polly   Joyce Simdars – Joe’s sweetheart and wife	George Pocock – built racing shells   Al Ulbrickson - head coach   Tom Bolles – freshman coach   Royal Broughman – sports writer   Ky Elbright – head coach, Univ. of California	Adolf Hitler   Werner March – architect   Dr. Joseph Goebbels – minister of public enlightenment and propaganda   Leni Riefenstahl – film maker
Olympic crew of the Husky Clipper: Bob Moch – coxswain Don Hume – seat #8 – stroke position Joe Rantz – seat #7 George “Shorty” Hunt – seat #6 – always told Joe, “I got your back.” Jim “Stub” McMillan – seat #5 John White Jr. – seat #4 – worked with Joe at Grand Coulee Dam Gordon Adam – seat #3 Chuck Day – seat #2 – worked with Joe at Grand Coulee Dam Roger Morris – seat #1 - bow

For discussion:
Note: The page numbers are from the paperback edition.

1. What do you think about Joe’s father and stepmother, Thula.  Were you able to understand how Thula felt toward Joe?  How was she able to justify kicking Joe out of the house at such a young age?  Also, how did both parents justify leaving their four children alone without much food to go off and have fun?
2. How did Joe’s experiences growing up help or hinder him in the boat?  In life?
3. All of the boys on the Olympic Team were extremely successful later in life.  Was this part at least due to their experiences in the boat?
4. Did you like how the story flipped between Joe and the boat and Hitler and Germany?  Did you learn anything new about Hitler and Nazi Germany leading up to WW II?
5. In boating when all are working at their ultimate it is called “swing.”  In Psychology Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called it “flow” or “the zone,” which is defined as  ”a mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.”  (Wikipedia)  Have you ever experienced that in something you like to do?
6. What did you think about the boy’s restricted diet leading up to races.  How would that be viewed with today’s knowledge of nutrition?
7. There was a lot to learn about life from the boy’s experiences and people’s thoughts.  Here are some I found:
1. Page 106 – “Like so much in life, crew was partly about confidence, partly about knowing your own heart.”
2. Page 235 – “What mattered more than how hard a man rowed was how well everything he did in the boat harmonized with what the other fellows were doing.”
3. Page 353 – “What is the spiritual value of rowing?...The losing of self entirely to the cooperative effort of the crew as a whole.”  George Pocock
4. Page 53 – “It is hard to make that boat go as fast as you want to.  The enemy, of course, is resistance of the water….So is life: the very problems you must overcome also support you and make you stronger in overcoming them.”  George Pocock
5. Page 51 – At the beginning of the freshman year when many men tried out for crew, “The first to drop out had been the boys with impeccably creased trousers and freshly polished oxfords.”
6. Page 39 – “Every good rowing coach, in his own way, imparts to his men the kind of self-discipline required to achieve the ultimate from mind, heart and body.  Which is why most ex-oarsmen will tell you they learned more fundamentally important lessons in the racing shell than in the classroom.”  George Pocock
8. Discuss your reading experience.  What did you learn from reading this book?

First Semester Success: Learning Strategies and Motivation for Your First Semester (or Any Semester) of College, by Dr. Arden B. Hamer, is available at amazon.com, wordassociation.com and barnesandnoble.com.  Click on the upper right link.