The Boys in the Boat By Miriam R. Kramer “When you get the rhythm in an eight, it’s pure pleasure to be in it. It’s not hard work when the rhythm comes—that ‘swing’ as they call it. I’ve heard men shriek out with delight when that swing came in an eight; it’s a thing they’ll never forget as long as they live—George Yeoman Pocock, racing shell builder “It’s the greatest eight I ever saw, and I never expect to see another like it.”—Jim Ten Eyck, Syracuse coach, eighty-two years old Daniel James Brown’s hit book, The Boys in the Boat, has been hovering at the top of the non-fiction bestseller lists for good reason. Brown met Harry Rantz, a member of the eight-man rowing crew that won gold at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, when Rantz was dying of congestive heart failure. Yet he happily told stories to Brown about his experience rowing in a boat that is often termed the best crew to ever row together in an eight-man shell. Their races happened during the backdrop of the Depression, when the American people needed someone to cheer and something to feel good about. When speaking to Brown, Joe implored him with tears in his eyes to write “[not] just about me. It has to be about the boat.” Brown realized that to Joe the boat meant more than the exquisite shell or the determined people in it, although they were part of it. The boat at its best was a mysterious moment of transcendence that caused Joe to adopt dependence on and trust in others while feeling a sense of timelessness. His experience as a rower proved a turning point in Joe’s difficult, independent life. In the book Joe serves as a symbol for the other kids in the…