The second of Erik Larson’s books I read in 2019 was Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania.
“Dead wake” is a maritime term for the disturbance that lingers on the surface of the sea long after the passage of a vessel—or a torpedo.
The RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner that Germany sunk during World War I, eleven miles off the coast of Ireland. 1198 people died in the disaster, and it was one of the key events used to build support for entering World War I in the United States (along with the Zimmerman Telegram, but that came later).
Larson follows the ship from its launch in New York to its watery grave, following events that culminated in one of the great maritime disasters of the twentieth century. It’s always so amazing to me how many things have to go exactly right (or wrong depending on your point of view) for a major event like this to actually take place. Larson’s writing makes it so clear how if even just a few circumstances change, the Lusitania sinking probably never would have happened. It’s an incredible read in the sheer scale of circumstances that needed to converge.
The book also follows passengers of the ship. This seems to bother some people in the reviews I read of the book at the time? People seem annoyed that the whole book doesn’t focus entirely on the sinking and I find this stupid. Larson’s books are narrative, and he always works in these details into that narrative. If you want a book that only describes facts of a disaster, read a textbook. I don’t know if people just don’t know what they’re signing up for or what, but most of Larson’s books are like this, and it’s fine with me. These are the kinds of details that bring history to life in my opinion. It’s great to know straight history, but it’s very easy to forget reading a textbook over a hundred years later, that people died in that sinking. Telling their stories keeps their memories alive. It’s all well and good to abstractly know that 1198 people died in the sinking of the Lusitania; it’s another to know who some of them were, what their story was, why they were on board. That’s living history in a way a textbook could never be.
All that said, I had trouble enjoying this book, lol. I have a theory I drowned in a past life on a boat like this, because you couldn’t get me near one. I feel anxious just thinking about it now. But I enjoyed the book in the sense that it was a good history book and I enjoyed learning about the Lusitania and its passengers. It was a good, well written read that taught a ton of history without making me feel like I was reading a history book at all.
Tagged: authors: erik larson, genre: history, genre: non-fiction
words in scarlet ink 
[…] The third (and final) book by Erik Larson was The Devil in the White City. Like Larson’s other works, he weaves several different narratives together and highlights how certain circumstances align into a perfect storm for a certain disaster to happen. In this case, the World’s Fair came to Chicago in 1893 and so did H.H. Holmes, the noted serial killer.The World’s Fair storyline follows Daniel Burnham, in his job to build the fair, and H.H. Holmes, in the building of his murder castle. Once again, Larson’s narrative indicates a perfect storm – one of the reasons Holmes got away with his murder castle for so long was because there were so many people in Chicago in 1893. I found Holmes to be the most interesting part of the book, but that isn’t surprising considering my interest in serial killers. Holmes was a jack of all trades criminal – he committed insurance fraud, arson, bigamy, grave robbing, and so on, not just murder. Holmes confessed to 27 murders (including people authorities could verify as still living, lol) but ended up being tried and executed for just one – his partner in insurance fraud, Benjamin Pitezel. The number of Holmes’ victims is unknown, but the conservative estimates put his number of victims at 10-34, and more liberal estimates put him at 200+. There’s really know way to tell.It was an interesting story. Even Burnham’s half of the narrative wasn’t boring, it just wasn’t Holmes’ half. It was interesting learning about the architecture for an event that wasn’t permanent, and ever more interesting learning how Burnham managed it when stuff happened like…his investor died.Overall, I enjoyed this immensely. Interestingly, Leonardo DiCaprio acquired the film rights to this book some time ago. 2010 maybe? The project has been delayed, but supposedly now is in development to be a television series.Larson has a couple of other books out, that I admittedly am not in a rush to get to but would probably enjoy. If I had to rank the three I read in 2019, I’d rank them as such:1. In the Garden of Beasts2. The Devil in the White City3. Dead Wake […]