Devil at My Heels: A Heroic Olympians Astonishing Story of Survival as a Japanese POW in World War II

The bestselling autobiography of the legendary Louis Zamperini, hero of the blockbuster Unbroken.A modern classic by an American legend, Devil at My Heels is the riveting and deeply personal memoir by U.S. Olympian, World War II bombardier, and POW survivor Louis Zamperini. His inspiring story of courage, resilience, and faith has captivated readers and audiences of Unbroken, now a major motion picture directed by Angelina Jolie. In Devil at My Heels, his official autobiography (cowritten with longtime collaborator David Rensin), Zamperini shares his own firsthand account of extraordinary journeyhailed as one of the most incredible American lives of the past century (People).A youthful troublemaker, a worldclass NCAA miler, a 1936 Olympian, a WWII bombardier: Louis Zamperini had a fuller life than most. But on May 27, 1943, it all changed in an instant when his B24 crashed into the Pacific Ocean, leaving Louis and two other survivors drifting on a raft for fortyseven days and two thousand miles, waiting in vain to be rescued. And the worst was yet to come when they finally reached land, only to be captured by the Japanese. Louis spent the next two years as a prisoner of wartortured and humiliated, routinely beaten, starved and forced into slave laborwhile the Army Air Corps declared him dead and sent official condolences to his family. On his return home, memories of the war haunted him nearly destroyed his marriage until a spiritual rebirth transformed him and led him to dedicate the rest of his long and happy life to helping atrisk youth.Told in Zamperinis own voice, Devil at My Heels is an unforgettable memoir from one of the greatest of the Greatest Generation, a living document about the brutality of war, the tenacity of the human spirit, and the power of faith.