New Release Books by Daniel James Brown

On December 7th 1941, the Japanese Navy bombed Pearl Harbor. For many Americans, the surprise attack was a call to arms - but for the soldier sons of Japanese-American immigrant parents, it brought prejudice and scrutiny over where their loyalties lay. In Facing the Mountain, Daniel James Brown tells the unforgettable story of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the Japanese-American heroes who displayed incredible courage on the brutal battlefields of Europe. Achieving the impossible in often near-suicidal missions, including rescuing a ''lost battalion'' surrounded by Nazis in the French mountains, the 442nd went on to become one of the most decorated units in history. Yet at the same time, their parents were put in camps and stripped of their livelihoods, and an equally brave battle was being fought in the courtroom back home. A cinematic tour de force, Facing the Mountain puts a real-life band of brothers in the history books where they belong and reminds us that victory is rarely as simple as we think.

The #1 New York Times–bestselling story about the American Olympic rowing triumph in Nazi Germany—from the author of Facing the Mountain. Soon to be a major motion picture directed by George Clooney For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant. It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. The emotional heart of the tale lies with Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not only to regain his shattered self-regard but also to find a real place for himself in the world. Drawing on the boys’ own journals and vivid memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, Brown has created an unforgettable portrait of an era, a celebration of a remarkable achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young man’s personal quest.

The #1 New York Times bestseller about the Greatest Generation freshly adapted for the next generation. For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Great Depression comes the astonishing tale of nine working-class boys from the American West who at the 1936 Olympics showed the world what true grit really meant. With rowers who were the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew was never expected to defeat the elite East Coast teams, yet they did, going on to shock the world by challenging the German boat rowing for Adolf Hitler. At the center of the tale is Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, whose personal quest captures the spirit of his generation—the generation that would prove in the coming years that the Nazis could not prevail over American determination and optimism. This deeply emotional yet easily accessible young readers adaptation of the award-winning #1 New York Times bestseller features never-before-seen photographs, highly visual back matter, and an exclusive new introduction.

In April of 1846, Sarah Graves was twenty-one and in love with a young man who played the violin. But she was torn. Her mother, father, and eight siblings were about to disappear over the western horizon forever, bound for California. Sarah could not bear to see them go out of her life, and so days before the planned departure she married the young man with the violin, and the two of them threw their lot in with the rest of Sarah''s family. On April 12, they rolled out of the yard of their homestead in three ox-drawn wagons. Seven months later, after joining a party of emigrants led by George Donner, Sarah and her family arrived at Truckee Lake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains just as the first heavy snows of the season closed the pass ahead of them. After a series of desperate attempts to cross the mountains, the party improvised cabins and slaughtered what remained of their emaciated livestock. By early December they were beginning to starve. Sarah''s father, a Vermonter, was the only member of the party familiar with snowshoes. Under his instruction, fifteen sets of snowshoes were hastily constructed from oxbows and rawhide, and on December 15, Sarah and fourteen other relatively young, healthy people set out for California on foot, hoping to get relief for the others. Over the next thirty-two days they endured almost unfathomable hardships and horrors. In this gripping narrative, Daniel James Brown takes the reader along on every painful footstep of Sarah''s journey. Along the way, he weaves into the story revealing insights garnered from a variety of modern scientific perspectives–psychology, physiology, forensics, and archaeology–producing a tale that is not only spell-binding but richly informative.

On September 1, 1894, two forest fires converged on the town of Hinckley, Minnesota, trapping more than two thousand people. The fire created its own weather, including hurricane-strength winds, bubbles of plasma-like glowing gas, and 200-foot-tall flames. As temperatures reached 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit, the firestorm knocked down buildings and carried flaming debris high into the sky. Two trains—one with every single car on fire—became the only means of escape. In all, more than four hundred people would die, leading to a revolution in forestry management and the birth of federal agencies that monitor and fight wildfires. A spellbinding account of danger, devastation, and courage, Under a Flaming Sky reveals the dramatic, minute-by-minute story of the tragedy and brings into focus the ordinary citizens whose lives it irrevocably marked.

With growing concerns about the win-at-all-costs mentality present in high-performance sporting environments, a shift in attention is required to protect and promote athlete welfare. The aim for this project was to offer novel insight into how elite sport environments can be shaped to promote both high performance and well-being (i.e., thriving). A longitudinal design was employed with one-to-one interviews conducted with eleven international track cyclists on three occasions over a six-month period. Interview data were iteratively analysed using reflexive thematic analysis to construct themes and describe areas of change. From this analysis, themes were presented as demands (e.g., lack of income, need for results and improved performance) and supports (e.g., mind-coach, non-sport friends), with some social agents (e.g., coach, family, training partners) and environmental features (e.g., concurrent study or vocational commitments) labelled as both demands and supports. Themes were also constructed for environmental areas of improvement pertaining to the coaching team, the Federation, innovation and expertise, and squad cohesion. Lastly, agents of changes (e.g., race schedule, selection decisions) were forwarded as events and circumstances which created fluctuations in the cyclists'' experiences. The findings from this study provide the first longitudinal account of Olympic-level performers'' attempts to thrive in high-performance environments and, thus, represent a unique attempt to understand these experiences over time. These findings are discussed in line with theory and practice, offering coaches and practitioners a better understanding of how to facilitate thriving in their Olympic athletes.