He also examined President Woodrow Wilson including his love life that ultimately distracted him from the greater issues of his time. Larson introduced me to Room 40 – a highly confidential British intelligence organization that intercepted and translated German messages including the infamous Zimmerman Telegram. Learn about the months leading up to the moment of impact and discover the unfortunate situation resulting in the avoidable and needless sinking of the Lusitania that killed 1,198 innocent individuals.īecause of Dead Wake, I learned intriguing things about WWI.

The author puts a face on the tragedy as he introduces you to passengers and crew members aboard the ill-fated ship. In maritime vernacular, this trail of fading disturbance, whether from ship or torpedo, was called a ‘dead wake’.”įollow the tragic and fascinating story of the Lusitania in Larson’s book, Dead Wake. Grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect ofĭead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster that helped place America on the road to war.“The track lingered on the surface like a long pale scar. Full of glamour, mystery, andĭead Wake brings to life a cast of evocativeĬharacters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneeringįemale architect Theodate Pope Riddle to President Wilson, a man lost to Think we know but don't, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switchingīetween hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of AmericaĪt the height of the Progressive Era. Guarded secret, and more-all converged to produce one of the great Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array ofįorces both grand and achingly small-hubris, a chance fog, a closely

Intelligence unit tracked Schwieger's U-boat, but told no one. To change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of He knew, moreover, that his ship-the fastest then in Strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safeįrom attack.

William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly Was one of the era's great transatlantic 'Greyhounds' and her captain, Months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an EnglishĬountry house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a From the #1 New York Times bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania, published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the disaster

Dead wake author