For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone.

Descriptionįrom thebestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the 'Lusitania.' On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. He lives in Seattle with his wife, three daughters, and a dog named Molly.

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.Erik Larson is the bestselling author of the National Book Award finalist and Edgar Award-winning The Devil in the White City. 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

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