Dead Wake

Erik Larson is probably my favorite living author. He writes non-fiction novels. To use a hackneyed phrase, he really brings the past to life. The dude goes bananas traveling the world and researching a specific topic for any given book. Marie just bought me his latest book and I devoured it in about 4 sittings in 3 days. This one is about the final voyage of the Lusitania.

I'm sure the story of the Lusitania is more familiar to yanks cuz it was pretty much the root cause for engaging the US in the First World War. But I didn't really know anything about it. It didn't take me 2 seconds to figure it out once I realized the protagonist was a captain of a cruise liner and the antagonist was the captain of a U-boat.

Dead Wake seemed to be one of his most thoroughly detailed historical accounts. But even given the minutia, it just flowed so well. You look at things on a microscopic level the way Erik does and it's just awesome. The book builds and builds until an unholy crescendo of horror, pain, death and loss.

Everyone should read this book so I don't want to give anything away regarding the other parts of the story you might not know about. But it's not the sinking of the Lusitania that's the most troubling aspect of this whole story: It's the government.

This book was fascinating. Read it.

44,000 tons, 9 passenger decks, 787 ft long, almost 3000 people capacity inc crew.