"I saw the play when I was 16, before I read the book, and was just knocked out by it. I remember sitting in the theater and being unable to speak at the end. I had the same feeling after reading the book," says Gary Sinise about Steinbeck's 1937 novella.

"How does someone survive one day in hell on Earth, let alone six years? When you read Leo's book, you can't help being humbled by what a human being can endure."

Gary Sinise was 18 when he first read this 1962 novel, set in an Oregon mental institution full of such memorable characters as the domineering Nurse Ratched and Randle McMurphy, an inmate who fakes insanity to get out of serving a prison sentence.

This biography, written by the author of Seabiscuit, follows the remarkable life story of Louis Zamperini, a juvenile delinquent turned Olympic runner turned World War II POW.