#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the bestselling author and
master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the
sinking of the Lusitania
**"Both terrifying and enthralling."--Entertainment Weekly
"Thrilling, dramatic and powerful."--NPR
"Thoroughly engrossing."--George R.R. Martin
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.
Finalist for the Washington State Book Award - One of the Best Books
of the Year: The Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Miami
Herald, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, LibraryReads, Indigo
