This is a New York Times best seller by “Seabiscuit” author Laura Hillenbrand.

    Growing up in California in the 1920s, Louie Zamperini was a hellraiser*, stealing everything edible* that he could carry, staging pranks*, getting in fistfights, and troubling the local police.

    But as a teenager, he became one of the greatest runners America had ever seen, competing at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he put on a sensational* performance, crossed paths with Hitler, and stole a German flag right off the Reich Chancellery*.

    He was preparing for the 1940 Olympics when World War II began. Zamperini joined the Army Air Corps, becoming a bombardier*. Stationed on Oahu, he survived battles, including one that ended when his plane crash-landed, with some 600 holes in its fuselage* and half the crew wounded.

    On a May afternoon in 1943, Zamperini took off on a search task for a lost plane. Somewhere over the Pacific, the engines on his bomber failed. The plane fell into the sea, leaving Zamperini and two other men stranded* on a raft*. Drifting for weeks and thousands of miles, they had nothing to eat or drink, and narrowly escaped sharks, a machine-gun attack from a Japanese bomber, and a typhoon* with huge waves. At last, they saw an island. As they rowed toward it, a Japanese military boat was lurking* nearby. They were taken by the Japanese.

    Returning to the United States after the war, he married the beautiful Cynthia Applewhite and tried to build a life. Zamperini was one of the thousands of postwar Pacific PTSD* sufferers. The book’s final section is the story of how, with Cynthia’s help, he found his cure.

    (SD-Agencies)