Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Dead Wake: the Last Crossing of the Lusitania / Erik Larson 430 pp.

Erik Larson has sold lots of books writing historical nonfiction that reads well, and, especially in the case of The Devil in the White City, juxtaposes disparate people and events to create smart narrative tension. The story of a Chicago serial killer, the World's Fair, and the invention of the Ferris Wheel make for strange and oddly fresh reading.

The Lusitania story unfolds along much more conventional lines and resembles a sort of museum exhibit in print. Perhaps this is why there are no photos; in Larson's 'Sources and Acknowledgements' he details the many physical artifacts from the sinking he was able to examine. Possibly he feels that his text renders our view of them unnecessary. And Dead Wake is certainly enjoyable and enlightening, but given the subject matter I suppose I expected more fireworks. He spends over half the book in the run up to the sinking, introducing us to the captain and many of the passengers, and more intriguing, I think, to U-Boat Kptlt. Walther Schwieger, who launched the fatal torpedo. Eventually this buildup grows too long, though, and the reader just wants Larson and Schwieger to get on with it.

Much more interesting are Larson's hints that Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty at the time of the sinking, hoped for the German destruction of a passenger ship carrying large numbers of Americans, and may have deliberately left the ship with insufficient information and without escort in the hopes that America would be dragged into the war earlier. I wish Larson had explored this further. If it's true, the implications are interesting. Did he also know about Pearl Harbor? Must I now boycott Masterpiece Theatre?

All complaints aside, this was informative and thoughtful reading, and I recommend it highly.

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