Book Review - Reader's Digest True Stories of Great Escapes

I picked up True Stories of Great Escapes by Reader's Digest at the book sale back in October. It cost me $4 and has a number of great escapes from around the world. The first tale recounted was that of a young Winston Churchill who was captured by the Boer in 1899. If I had based the rest of the book on this story I would have stopped reading. Deathly boring.

Luckily I didn't and discovered in the rest of the book are stories of escape from East Berlin by plane, assumption of an Austrian's identity by a chess-playing Hungarian to get away from the Russians and an amazing tale of a Pole who helped someone take flight from Austria and return to Poland with the Russians chasing his passenger who ends up saving his life. There's 98 pages dedicated to escapes from Colditz Castle which makes great reading. I also found the story of a little English woman who journeyed to China to take up God's work and who saved a hundred orphans before going on to early Taiwan during the revolution after surviving the attack by the Japanese. By far the best story was of an Australian escape from a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Asia - it is depicted so graphically it's almost unbelievable.

If you enjoy true stories of courage, determination and the will to survive then you should read this book.

Reader's Digest True Stories of Great Escapes