Erik Larson

dead-wake

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Love and terror in Hitler's Berlin

In The Garden of Beasts

Thunderstruck

The Devil In The White City

Dead Wake

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Gripping, superbly well-researched...he ratchets up the tension as the doomed ship speeds towards the inevitable. Though you know it’s going to happen, you keep praying that it won’t, right up until the moment when the torpedo strikes. You feel this way because Larson makes you care...Thanks to Larson’s vivid narrative, you are there with those passengers in the thick of it. It may have happened 100 years ago, but this masterpiece made it feel like yesterday.

With practised skill Larson confronts the emotional pathos of wartime tragedy.

Larson's irresistibly pacey narrative moves between the various scenes of action, conjuring them up in vivid detail...the sources are remarkable...[his] detailed conversational endnotes are an added bonus.

A gripping piece of narrative history which moves almost with the same speed as Schwieger's torpedo.

Larson has an eye for haunting, unexploited detail...illuminating...suspenseful.

The master of popular non-fiction...a gripping account.

Larson's page turner brings the disaster to life.

Larson's approach to history resembles a novelist's... a rattling read.

Gripping...absorbing...however, it is when dealing with the aftermath of the tragedy, along with the attendant conspiracy theories, that Larson breaks new ground.  I found it very hard to put down.

Larson . . . writes non-fiction books that read like novels, real page-turners. This one is no exception . . . thoroughly engrossing

The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

1st May 1915: the luxury ocean liner Lusitania sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool. 
 
Her passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone and its submarines were bringing terror to the Atlantic. 
 
 But the Lusitania’s captain, William Thomas Turner, had faith in the gentlemanly terms of warfare that had, for a century, kept civilian ships safe from attack. 
 
He also knew that his ship was the fastest then in service and could outrun any threat. Germany was, however, intent on changing the rules, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. For this would be the ill-fated Lusitania’s final crossing . . .

The No.1 New York Times bestselling author of The Devil in the White City brings his breathtaking narrative skills to bear on the story of the sinking of the Lusitania, published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the disaster and has won the Good Reads Choice Award for the best history book of 2015.

On 1 May 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool. The passengers - including a record number of children and infants - were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, its submarines had brought terror to the North Atlantic. 
But the Lusitania's captain, William Thomas Turner, had faith in the gentlemanly terms of warfare that had, for a century, kept civilian ships safe from attack. He also knew that his ship - the fastest then in service - could outrun any threat. But Germany was intent on changing the rules, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit were tracking Schwieger's U-boat...but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way towards Liverpool, forces both grand and achingly small - hubris, a chance fog, a closely-guarded secret and more - converged to produce one of the great disasters of 20th century 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. Full of glamour, mystery, and real-life suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, including the US President 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 that helped place America on the road to war.

Erik Larson is a prize-winning journalist and narrative historian. His books include Isaac's Storm, Thunderstruck and In the Garden of Beasts and have combined sales of nearly 6 million copies and been published in 14 countries. His No.1 bestseller The Devil in the White City won an Edgar Award and was shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Non-Fiction Award. He lives in Seattle.

Dead Wake

The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

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A fascinating, well-researched read.

With practised skill Larson confronts the emotional pathos of wartime tragedy.

Vivid...Larson tells his story well.

Larson's irresistibly pacey narrative moves between the various scenes of action, conjuring them up in vivid detail...the sources are remarkable...[his] detailed conversational endnotes are an added bonus.

A gripping piece of narrative history which moves almost with the same speed as Schwieger's torpedo.

Larson has an eye for haunting, unexploited detail...illuminating...suspenseful.

The master of popular non-fiction...a gripping account.

Larson's page turner brings the disaster to life.

Larson's approach to history resembles a novelist's... a rattling read.

About Erik Larson

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