Crown, 2015 (March)
448 pp
Faithful readers of Erik Larson will be absolutely thrilled to know that he has another book out -- Dead Wake:The Last Crossing of the Lusitania. I have a longer post about this book here. Sadly, it's not available to buy until March, but thanks to LibraryThing's early reviewers program and to Crown Publishing, I was lucky enough able to read it ahead of its release date.
There's just something about the word "Lusitania" that has stirred the public imagination for years. It's been widely written about, and its sinking has sparked long-standing controversy over what was in its hold or whether or not the British purposefully failed to protect it as a means to force America into the war. Larson has picked a great topic here and he makes it very easy for anyone to understand not only the sequence of events before, during and after the Lusitania went down, but also the significance of this event on the wider world stage. He has done a tremendous amount of research for this project as revealed by his sources both primary and secondary, and provides notes in the back of the book for easy reference. No knowledge of the Lusitania or of the time period is required -- everything that is necessary to know has been provided by the author making it accessible to everyone.
Seriously -- this might be his best work since Isaac's Storm, which is my all-time favorite of Larson's books.
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