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, 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 anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds" 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. He knew, moreover, that his ship - the fastest then in service - could outrun any threat.

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, mystery, and real-life suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope Riddle to President 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 that helped place America on the road to war.

Reader Reviews

Chris

(5/5)

Nov 21, 2024

Wrenching and riveting. I'm a big fan of Erik Larson, and he is seriously on top of his game with "Dead Wake." His analysis of all the elements that had to conspire for the ship to sink is at once poignant and smart.

Kemper

(3/5)

133

This reminded me a lot of the movie Titantic not just because it’s about a disaster at sea, but also it would have been a lot shorter and better without the romantic subplot. Only in this case it was U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and Edith Bolling Galt instead of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Although I gotta admit that the scene when ole Woody sketched Edith in the nude was pretty hot…..Wait. I might have mixed something up there.This is part of the continuing trend of Erik Larson’s books...

Matthew

Driving back from a vacation to Tampa Bay followed by having to mow my lawn after 10 days away allowed me to finish this 13 hour audiobook in about 24 hours.Also, it is a Scott Brick audio which is a huge bonus!Larson does it again with an intriguing look into a major event in history. It is well researched and he does a great job integrating other anecdotes of the time to create a picture of America before they joined WWI and the antagonism between England and Germany early on during the war. W...

Jill Hutchinson

Larson has really delivered on this book. I have read all of his works and his style appeals to me. In this book, the subject appeals to me as well since it gets less attention than the sinking of the Titanic but has much more historic significance. Europe was caught up in the horror of WWI but the US was remaining isolated and neutral. The Lusitania, carrying 189 American passengers in her total count of 2,000 souls aboard, was the largest and fastest of the Cunard Line luxury ships and departe...

Jeffrey Keeten

(4/5)

241

”He saw the body of the torpedo moving well ahead of the wake, through water he described as being ‘a beautiful green.’ The torpedo ‘was covered with a silvery phosphorescence, you might term it, which was caused by the air escaping from the motors.’He said, ‘It was a beautiful sight.’” The last known photo of the Lusitania.The term unsinkable had been obliterated from references regarding great ocean liners after the Titanic sunk in 1912. The impossible had already happened. In 1915 the Lusi...

Justin Tate

Not enthralling for me personally, but otherwise excellently done. This is a supremely well-researched account of the life and times of the early 1900s, WWI, and, of course, the sinking of the Lusitania. Going in, my knowledge of the Lusitania was sadly little. Being educated in such a significant historic event is the clear benefit of this book. Unlike some historical accounts, however, the narrative struggles to captivate in any meaningful way outside of all the interesting facts. More textboo...

Chrissie

Stuffed with details. Are there too many?I continue.******************************************I feel guilty giving this book only three stars, but that reflects my honest reaction. It is interesting. It is accurate. It is extensively researched. It is about an event, the torpedo sinking of the British steamship passenger liner, the Lusitania, in 1915 by a German submarine. The death toll came to 1,198 persons, including passengers, crew and 3 German stowaways. There were 1,962 on board. Only 764...

Will Byrnes

205

Dead Wake is named a 2015 notable non fiction book by the Washington Post The track lingered on the surface like a long pale scar. In maritime vernacular, the trail of fading disturbance, whether from ship or torpedo, was called a “dead wake.” On May 7, 1914, only a few years after that most famous of ocean-liners had had an unfortunate encounter with an iceberg on its maiden voyage, RMS Lusitania, popularly referred to as “Lucy,” having already crossed the Atlantic dozens of times, this tim...

Dem

"The Devil is in the detail" and Erik Larson's Dead wake : The last crossing of the Lusitania is certainly packed full of detail but details that for me made this book such a worthwhile read. Living in Ireland I thought I was informed through history classes in school of the events surrounding the sinking of the Lusitania off the cost of Kinsale Head in Co. Cork however I was surprised by the information I gained by reading Dead Wake. Published to coincide with the 100th Anniversary in May of

Diane

This is a fascinating book about the sinking of the Lusitania, the British ocean liner that was torpedoed by a German submarine in May 1915. Nearly 1,200 people died, including 128 Americans. I didn't know much about the Lusitania before I read this book, but I should have because it was one of the critical events that pushed America to enter World War I.What Erik Larson does well is to put the Lusitania event in the context of history: the reader gets a good sense of what was happening in the w...

Jason

Book 1 for 2016.Erik Larson strikes again only this time with the speed and grace of a scythe. Tackling a not that well-known maritime incident, he takes us right into the cauldron of this major event of both United States and World History albeit looking at it from a myriad of different viewpoints in a sort of Rashomon-type retelling of the sinking of the Lusitania, the impetus for America's belated entry into the Great War.Taking place just three years after that other "night to remember" when...

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Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

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