Dead Wake

The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

De: Erik Larson

Narrado por: Scott Brick

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania

“Both terrifying and enthralling.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Thrilling, dramatic and powerful.”—NPR
“Thoroughly engrossing.”—George R.R. Martin

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.

Finalist for the Washington State Book Award • One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Miami Herald, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, LibraryReads, Indigo

U-Boats. Sinister. Fascinating

I am a 33 year old male without formal education. I adore history books if the story holds my attention, but I'm usually a fiction reader. Dead Wake got me off good!!!!

No New Ground but Very Entertaining

I may be one of the few people who didn't fall in love with Larson's book Devil in The White City. His writing style is a little too florid and wordy to me. However, since I read anything I can about World War 1, my issues with Larson's writing style wouldn't stop me from reading Dead Wake. And it is a book worth reading. Dead Wake tells the story of the sinking of the Lusitania, but that is really just the launching point of the book. Larson interweaves other key events and people into the narrative so the reader gets a good overview of the British Intelligence system, especially its code breaking department, the German and British navy's, especially the German U-Boat program, the operation of one of the largest businesses of the period, the Cunard Lines and more importantly the individuals intimately involved in the fate of the Lusitania, not just those on the boat, the crew and the passengers, but also the captain of the U-Boat who fired the torpedo that sunk the ship. He brought detail to at least a couple dozen passengers and crew members, some who survived and some who didn't. People who were never famous and are largely unknown by now. Because so much of the book dealt with the minutia of people's lives, I thought his writing style was better suited to this subject.

He also dealt with the Wilson administration and Wilson's appalling immaturity and naivete far more sympathetically than other contemporary authors. If anything, his generally positive handling of Wilson, was about the only thing that rang untrue.

I listened to this book and while Scott Brick is a prolific narrator and I regularly listen to and enjoy his narration style, I found his narration of this book a little too dramatic. he tried to infuse the narrative with a little too much emotion and drama for my taste. Regardless, it is still a book worth listening to. And it seemed to go very fast.

I heartily recommend this book.

Very good story, but perhaps a bit too much

I enjoyed learning as much as I did. It brought the entire affair into fresh perspective. I would say as fascinating as the story was, thee is a balance between evens and some of the detailed descriptions of the passengers which might have been better stuck. There were times when, if not driving, I would have wanted to fast forward through the plentiful and all too vivid descriptions of lady's clothing or the various gentlemen's fashion choices. The political discussions, technical and nautical coverage was perfect. Just since we likely knew more about the wealthy passengers, the story seemed bias toward the deaths of the rich and famous. Not exclusively but heavily. None of which detracts from the value of the story

Best Yet

Move over Devil in the White City, there is a new best. Incredible, heart gripping, human story of tragedy and survivors, of WWI, Germans, the British, Americans, spies and leaders and captains and Presidents. How a ship and a people met their fate. I couldn't put it down.

I had chills listening to Larson’s description

I knew the story of the Lusitania, but the research that Erik Larson brought together in this book added aspects that would never be covered in a history book. He introduced his readers to the travelers who were heading into a critical moment in history.