A number of years ago, I read author Eric Larson’s The Devil in the White City. A history book, Larson followed the lives of two men living in Chicago around the time of the Chicago World’s Fair. One was the architect responsible for seeing the whole thing off without a hitch and showcase America’s promise. The other was America’s first serial killer. The two never met, their stories didn’t really intertwine, but Larson showed a real gift for storytelling in that work. Later books of Larson’s that I picked up were not quite as satisfying, but that one book was a real gem of popular history.
But then I found his 2015 bestseller Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania sitting on a book shelf. A hardcover I had no recollection of buying, I opted to give Larson another shot. And there was a good reason I didn’t remember buying it, but that was because I found a name signed inside of a friend of my ex-wife’s, and as I am not seeing that woman again anytime soon, I hope she doesn’t want this book back…
Regardless, review forthcoming.
The Lusitania was, in 1915, one of the largest and fastest luxury liners in the world. Famous for its four smokestacks, the ship could cross the Atlantic in a matter of days and the common belief was that German U-boats would either A) not sink a cruise ship or B) even if one tried, the Lusitania could outrun them. The second part is actually true, so why then did the ship sink, taking the lives of over 1,000 of the 1,700 passengers and crew onboard?
The short answer is, believe it or not, a lot of dumb luck. A lot of things had to go right or wrong for this to happen, and Larson covers all of them. This isn’t just the history of the famous ship that could have gotten the United States into World War I a few years earlier if some of the more bellicose Americans (like Theodore Roosevelt) might have done had they been more than a minority viewpoint. But not only does Larson follow the ship itself, most notably following the captain and multiple passengers and crew (most of them survivors, hence the reason Larson has their tales in the first place), but also the captain of the U-boat that actually ordered the firing of the torpedo that sank the ship, a special group of British naval intelligence whose tracking and tricks not only put the Lusitiania in more danger but also prevented safety precautions from being followed, and Woodrow Wilson, who spends most of the book trying to win over his eventual second wife Edith.
There’s a lot to like here. Larson’s prose is clear and concise. He managed to make me care about the fates of people who were all long dead anyway, and in the final sections, when Larson switches to the recovery and rescue efforts that saved some lives if not a majority of the people onboard, he shows a lot of everyday heroics from people who maybe didn’t know they had it in them while mourning the dead. Everyone Larson writes about comes across as a human being, sometimes capable of awful pettiness (the British intelligence people seem awfully short-sighted in certain ways) or lonely and depressed (Woodrow Wilson). By focusing on the one event and everyone involved, it makes for a much better book. And that is, in the end, all I really want from a good history book.
Grade: A-
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