In 1936, nine working class boys from the University of Washington took the rowing world and the United States by storm when their eight-oar crew team captured the gold medal at the Olympics in Berlin. These sons of loggers, shipyard workers and farmers overcame tremendous hardships—psychological, physical and economic—to beat not only the Ivy League teams of the East Coast, but Adolf Hitler’s elite German rowers. The boys’ unexpected victory, and the obstacles they overcame to achieve it, inspired a nation struggling to emerge from the depths of the Depression. The Boys of ’36 recounts their remarkable journey.