#1 New York Times Bestseller

From the 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.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
Published: 03/10/2015
ISBN: 9780307408860
Pages: 448
Weight: 1.49lbs
Size: 9.36h x 6.94w x 1.41d
Award: ALA Notable Books - Winner

Review Citations: Library Journal Prepub Alert 10/01/2014 pg. 62
Kirkus Reviews 12/01/2014
Publishers Weekly 01/05/2015
Booklist 01/01/2015 pg. 33
Entertainment Weekly 12/26/2014 pg. 89
Library Journal 02/01/2015 pg. 92
BookPage 03/01/2015
People Weekly 03/30/2015 pg. 50
Shelf Awareness 03/10/2015
New York Times Book Review 03/08/2015 pg. 1
New York Times Book Review 03/15/2015 pg. 26
Entertainment Weekly 03/13/2015 pg. 58
New Yorker (The) 03/30/2015 pg. 74
Kirkus Best Nonfiction 12/01/2015 pg. 28
Library Journal 10/01/2014

Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 185200 / Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
Reading Level: 8.6 / Interest Level: Upper Grade / Point Value: 20