Tells the story of the doomed final voyage of the Lusitania from New York to England. Larson has considerable narrative talents, and here he brings a ton of research together to present the story very well, switching between the stories of many passengers (survivors, of course, who left diaries or presented their stories), the commander of the German submarine which sunk the Lusitania (this stuff is really fascinating), and even Woodrow Wilson. It's a good fast read. ( )

I walked away from reading Dead Wake with mixed feelings. On the one hand, Larson painted a superb portrait of what a passenger voyage in that time period could look like, and did a good job explaining the shock that the sinking of the Lusitania caused at the time, however, as a history book it fell flat, as Larson opted to insert an excessive amount of heart wrenching details in lieu of quality discussion of the bigger picture.

This book wanted to be a novel, and in the spirit of a novel, Larson introduces us to many of the passengers in a delightful and conversational way, painting a portrait of their lives before, during, and for some, after the voyage. While this was of immense help in conceptualizing the humanity aboard the Lusitania, towards the end I felt that it just detracted from the larger tragedy and impact of the event.

Larson gives helpful details about the operation, construction and role of the passenger liner, few sections go beyond a casual perusal of the facts with a dash of novelistic prose, but that was often all that was needed. For some strange reason, Larson opted to make President Wilson's budding romance with his soon-to-be second wife a main topic of the book. I presume this was to provide a lighthearted sideline to the tragedy of the sinking, but it was misplaced. What struck me towards the end was how little Wilson had to do with the sinking of the ship, and by saying that, I mean he had practically no bearing or impact on the Lusitania either before or after its sinking. I would much rather have learned more about what led the Kaiser towards unrestricted submarine warfare, or what was impacting people in the British Admiralty or Cunard's main office rather than a host of extraneous details about Wilson.

I was very disappointed by the post-sinking section and its analysis of the responsibility of the sinking. This is such a controversial topic, containing one of the few plausible conspiracy theories of great magnitude, mainly, did the British Admiralty deliberately place the Lusitania in harms way in hopes to turn American public opinion against Germany? This was one of the primary reasons in my reading this book, I wanted thoughtful and up-to-date analysis of the conspiracy theory. A large amount of sensationalistic writing abounds in this subject, and I was hoping that Larson would delve into it. Sadly, he didn't analyze this at all, and devoted not more than a page or two to the subject, the keystone of this being a quote from another book plopped into the text with only the most vapid analysis.

If you're wanting to read a page-turning history book that describes the sinking of the Lusitania and nothing else then this is for you. If you're hoping to get into the meat of the subject look elsewhere. ( )

Terrifying, enthralling, minute details - an "edge of your seat" page turner

Read by Scott Brick, another fine non-fiction by Erik Larson. Erik gives us a great sense of place as he interweaves the stories of the many people involved with, affected by, and responsible for the sinking of the British Ocean Liner, the Lusitania on May 7th, 1915. ( )

Erik Larson is one of my favorite authors. He makes nonfiction history read like a novel.