#1 New York Times Bestseller
From the bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania
On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds”—the fastest liner then in service—and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack.
Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger’s U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small—hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more—all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history.
It is a story that many of us think we know but don’t, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope to President Woodrow Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love.
Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster whose intimate details and true meaning have long been obscured by history.
Erik Larson is a master of non-fiction.
In his telling of the sinking of the Lusitania, Larson tells the tale of a dozen people involved in the tragedy - the captains, the passengers, even the folks off the ship. It's a horrifying story of miscommunication, panic, and death. If you're familiar with the story of the Lusitania at all, then you know that the ship was primarily a passenger vessel. Merchant vessels like this were warned about sailing through war zones, and by all rights, it really should not have been torpedoed. But I'm not here to tell you the history of the Lusitania, nor assert my opinions regarding war tactics.
Larson tells this as a story, carefully balancing different perspectives to offer a full, impartial story. No matter what way you spin it, the Lusitania is a deep, troubling tragedy. Through Larson's expert storytelling, you become attached to the passengers as characters in the tale. If you're even vaguely interested in the Lusitania, WWI, maritime history or history in general, I can't recommend this enough. It's beautifully told and filled with careful research. I enjoyed it as much as one can enjoy such a history.
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22 February, 2019:
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22 February, 2019:
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