This book is a lively and fun read about the young men who rowed crew at Washington University in the first half of the 20th century, eventually winning gold at the 1936 Olympics in Hitler’s Germany. It is centered around one particular rower, Joe Rantz, and his struggles in the economic depression of the late 1920’s. Through pure perseverance, he manages to survive a traumatic childhood, earn enough money to get himself a University education, get married, have a family, and live a happy life (along with winning a gold medal at the Olympics). His story is truly inspiring, a testament to what any one of us might achieve if we set our mind to it.

While most reviews of this book will focus on the sport of rowing or the Nazi’s use of propaganda to convince the world they weren’t an authoritarian government bent on ethnically cleansing their country, I’d like to take a different angle. For me, the arc of this book was Joe Rantz’s transformation from a lonesome man doing his best to survive to a man integral to the group in the boat. It is the story of a fierce individual finding a community which loves and supports him, and in fact would have been unable to win without him.

In the sport of rowing, there is a term called ‘swing,’ which is when all eight rowers are in such perfect unison that not a single action is out of sync; all operate as one. Obviously, this can be an incredibly difficult thing to achieve, and while each individual rower’s strength and abilities are important, it is this harmony, more than anything else, that predicts a crew’s success on the water. This was the psychological journey traveled by Joe Rantz, from an individual to a member of the crew, and it is a metaphor I believe we can all appreciate.

We are all individuals, and we are all members of a myriad of social groups, and I believe that finding the balance between these two psychological entities is paramount to living a happy and healthy life. The crew of a rowboat (called a shell) is a perfect metaphor. Each member must practice their technique and build their individual strength in addition to pulling in sync with the others. We may not be in an actual boat, perhaps our metaphorical boat is an office or a family, but we must likewise sharpen our own skills in addition to working in sync with others. While some of us are too individualistic and some of us are too community-oriented, we must all find a balance between the two, because without it, our boat will surely capsize.