Laura Hillenbrand
Laura Hillenbrand
Laura Hillenbrandis an American author of books and magazine articles. Her two best-selling nonfiction books, Seabiscuit: An American Legend and Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption have sold over 10 million copies, and each was adapted for film. Her writing style is considered to differ from the New Journalism style, dropping verbal pyrotechnics in favor of a stronger focus on the story itself...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth15 May 1967
CountryUnited States of America
I got sick when I was 19, and I'd been a really healthy 19-year-old, so I don't have a lot to compare it to. Does it feel like the pain after you give birth? I don't know
I think authors can get into trouble viewing the subject matter as their turf
And at that point, I think my experience in covering the subject helped me. I think editors felt comfortable with the idea of me telling this story because I had demonstrated that I know this business pretty well
I think if I had been writing fiction, where the work is entirely dependent on the writer's creativity and the potential directions the narrative might take are infinite, I might have frozen
In 1938... the year's #1 newsmaker was not FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. Nor was it Lou Gehrig or Clark Gable. The subject of the most newspaper column inches in 1938 wasn't even a person. It was an undersized, crooked-legged racehorse named Seabiscuit.
Such beauty, he thought, was too perfect to have come about by mere chance. That day in the center of the Pacific was, to him, a gift crafted deliberately, compassionately, for him and Phil. Joyful and grateful in the midst of slow dying, the two men bathed in that day until sunset brought is, and their time in the doldrums, to an end.
Though all three men faced the same hardship, their differing perceptions of it appeared to be shaping their fates. Louie and Phil's hope displaced their fear and inspired them to work toward their survival, and each success renewed their physical and emotional vigor. Mac's resignation seemed to paralyze him and the less he participated in their efforts to survive, the more he slipped. Though he did the least, as the days passed, it was he who faded the most. Louie and Phil's optimism, and Mac's hopelessness, were becoming self-fulfilling.
... character reigns preeminent in determining potential.
When he thought of his history, what resonated with him now was not all that he had suffered but the divine love that he believed had intervened to save him.
We just sat there and watched the plane pass the island, and it never came back," he said. "I could see it on the radar. It makes you feel terrible. Life was cheap in war.
I'm attracted to subjects who overcome tremendous suffering and learn to cope emotionally with it
He had no money and no home; he lived entirely on the road of the racing circuit, sleeping in empty stalls, carrying with him only a saddle, his rosary, and his books....The books were the closest thing he had to furniture, and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.
My agent and I put out my proposal one Thursday afternoon in August, 1998. Publishers started bidding immediately, and that process progressed for a few days.
What God asks of men, said [Billy] Graham, is faith. His invisibility is the truest test of that faith. To know who sees him, God makes himself unseen.