Erik Larson's works tend to reflect his highly academic approach to life. A summa cum laude grad of the University of Pennsylvania, and also of Columbia University, he turned to journalism after seeing the film All the President's Men, which helps to explain his penchant for writing accurate, riveting historical books, and his 2015 release, Dead Wake was no exception.
The story is an attempt to recreate through beautiful language the complexity and paranoia surrounding the sinking of the Lusitania by German forces in 1915. The story quickly rose to the top, becoming one of 2015's most purchased books, likely because of Larson's reputation for works like In the Garden of Beasts, or Thunderstruck.
Larson says in an interview that the amount of first-hand documents he researched was so vast, and the book was heralded not only as a riveting exploration of the untimely end of the Lusitania, but also for the sheer scope of the work. The book weaves together many aspects of life, from politics, to war theory, to the population on the boat, to the technical explanations for what happened, but all told as one cohesive moment in time.
