Dead Wake

So what do you know about the Lusitania? A week ago if you asked me about it about all I would have said is, “It was a big ship. It sank sometime around World War I. Lots of people died. Didn’t the Germans sink it?”

I know, pitiful.

Erik Larson, author of numerous bestsellers and an amazing storyteller of true history, wrote Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania for the uninformed like me. And, as most of his books are, it’s informative, entertaining, and thoughtful.

At first I was going to suggest the book as a good summer read. But it’s hard to do when the book is about a World War, the sinking of a luxury cruise liner, and the death of hundreds of innocent people. Still, Dead Wake has the feel of a novel. Larson is such a good writer you feel drawn into the story as if you were reading a great mystery.

Obviously it doesn’t have a happy ending. There is no neat and tidy ending to such a tragedy. But understanding the story is critical to understanding how America became a global superpower. The event was so outrageous, so shocking, that it drew the otherwise isolationist America into World War I and launched what became known as the American Century. Larson doesn’t dwell on this, but it’s incredibly obvious by the last chapter.

Well worth reading. Two thumbs up from me.