The Unbreakable Laura Hillenbrand

New York Times ^ | December 18, 2014 | WIL S. HYLTON

[Seizethecarp]

...Bill Darron drove down the alley behind Laura Hillenbrand’s house (with) a Norden bombsight.

Since 1987, Hillenbrand has been sick with chronic fatigue syndrome, which has mostly confined her indoors for the last quarter century. When she explained this to Darron, he agreed to bring the Norden from New Jersey on his next visit to Washington. Now, as he made the final calibrations, Hillenbrand returned to the room, and he offered her a brief tutorial. He showed her how to position herself above the monocular eyepiece, guide the cross hairs toward a target on the map, then lock the sight into position and wait for the twin indicators to align — until, with a satisfying click, the salvo mechanism released. Hillenbrand spent more than an hour crouched over the bombsight. Each time she came to the end of the map, Darron would reset the system to begin again.

“I spent the afternoon bombing Phoenix,” Hillenbrand told me.

She has been forced by the illness to develop convoluted workarounds for some of the most basic research tasks, yet her workarounds, in all their strange complexity, deliver many of her greatest advantages. When I asked, for example, how she reads old newspapers on microfilm without traveling to a library, I was stunned to discover that she doesn’t. “I can’t look at microfiche,” she said. “I couldn’t do that even in my good vertigo years.”

Instead, Hillenbrand buys vintage newspapers on eBay and reads them in her living room, as if browsing the morning paper.

It was in those vintage newspapers that Hillenbrand discovered her next book. “I happened to turn over a clipping about Seabiscuit,” she said. “On the other side of that page, directly the opposite side of the page, was an article on Louie Zamperini, this running phenom.”

[Hebrews 11:6]

I better get the book.

I'm very confident you won't be disappointed. You are aware Unbroken is coming out in a few days as a movie? I'm going to finish the book before seeing it.

Also, I recorded the recent interview Tom Brokaw did of both the film's director, Angelina Jolie, and Louis Zamperini himself (shortly before he died); I'm holding off on watching it, too, until I finish the book. But I suspect with your research prowess you could find that interview archived if interested--it's called "NBC News Special: Angelina Jolie: Unbroken." It aired December 9th.

Finally, with your interest in history, you might enjoy this. Zamp was a USC Trojan, as am I; and a movement is afoot to get some significant portion of the L.A. Coliseum, where Louis ran in high school and for SC, named after him--perhaps the Zamperini Archway or some such.

[Nifster]

Indeed.

I got to meet Louie because a friend of mine knew him. He casually mentioned that a book was coming out about his life and he would bring her a copy. Yes that was the book and he signed it for her. SO I insisted that she let me take them both to lunch just because.....