Recommendations
Books Like Unbroken
Best books to read after Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken is the nonfiction narrative of Olympic runner Louie Zamperini's survival of WWII in the Pacific. These recommendations explore the WWII Pacific narrative nonfiction tradition, or offer companion reading in the tradition of the extreme survival narrative that demonstrates what human beings are capable of enduring.
- 1Buy
Seabiscuit
by Laura Hillenbrand
The companion Hillenbrand narrative — the story of the racehorse Seabiscuit and the three men who surrounded him during the Depression; Hillenbrand's first book, equally compelling and equally meticulous in its research.
- 2Buy
The Pacific
by Hugh Ambrose
The companion Pacific War narrative — four Marine veterans of the Pacific campaign, companion to the HBO series The Pacific; the most comprehensive narrative nonfiction account of the Pacific war that Zamperini survived.
- 3Buy
With the Old Breed
by Eugene Sledge
The essential Marine memoir companion — Eugene Sledge's memoir of combat on Peleliu and Okinawa, one of the most acclaimed WWII memoirs and the companion for Unbroken readers who want the ground perspective on the Pacific War.
- 4Buy
Band of Brothers
by Stephen Ambrose
The companion WWII unit history — the Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment from D-Day to the end of the war in Europe; Ambrose's narrative nonfiction method and his access to veterans' testimony is the same technique Hillenbrand uses in Unbroken.
- 5Buy
Into Thin Air
by Jon Krakauer
The extreme survival narrative companion — Krakauer's account of the 1996 Everest disaster; shares Unbroken's interest in the extremes of what human physiology can endure and the decisions that people make under extreme duress.
- 6Buy
Endurance
by Alfred Lansing
The Antarctic survival companion — Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1916 and the extraordinary survival story when the Endurance was crushed by ice; shares Unbroken's remarkable survival arc and its portrait of a leader who refused to let his men die.
- 7Buy
Flyboys
by James Bradley
The Pacific War companion — Bradley's account of the American aviators captured and killed by Japanese forces on the island of Chichi Jima, setting important context for the same Pacific theater that Zamperini flew in and was shot down over.
- 8Buy
The Things They Carried
by Tim O'Brien
The literary war companion that addresses the same question from another war — what survives combat and captivity, and how do you write about it honestly; O'Brien's semi-autobiographical Vietnam stories are the literary fiction equivalent of Unbroken's nonfiction inquiry into what war does to men.
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