Dead wake : the last crossing of the Lusitania / Erik Larson.
From the #1 New York Times bestselling 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. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds"--the fastest liner then in service--and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger's U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small--hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more--all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history. It is a story that many of us think we know but don't, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope to President Woodrow Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love. Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster whose intimate details and true meaning have long been obscured by history.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780553551631
- ISBN: 0553551639
- Physical Description: 1 online resource (1 sound file) : digital
- Edition: Unabridged.
- Publisher: [New York] : Random House Audio, 2015.
Content descriptions
Formatted Contents Note: | Mining suspense -- A word from the captain -- "Bloody monkeys" -- Jump rope and caviar -- Dead wake -- The black soul -- The sea of secrets -- Epilogue: personal effects. |
Participant or Performer Note: | Read by Scott Brick. |
Source of Description Note: | Title details screen (OverDrive; viewed March 2, 2015). |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Lusitania (Steamship) World War, 1914-1918 > Naval operations, German. Shipping > Government policy > Great Britain > History > 20th century. |
Genre: | Audiobooks. Downloadable audio books. |