Book Review: Dead Wake {Blogging for Books}

Dead Wake: The last crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson*
ISBN: 9780307408877
Publisher: Broadway Books
Paperback, 452 pages
Retail: $17.00

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About the book: On May 1, 1915, with World War I 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. 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. As the Lusitania made her 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. 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. 

About the author: Erik Larson is the author of five national bestsellers, including The Devil in the White City and In the Garden of Beasts, which have collectively sold more than 6.5 million copies. His books have been published in seventeen countries. 

My thoughts: "Larson is one of the modern masters of popular narrative nonfiction...(New York Times book review)" This is my first time reading a book by Larson, though I now own four of his books. This will definitely not be my last Larson book. 
I had long thought that Larson's books were fiction, through and through. Loosely based on historical events but with much license for making it more interesting. Well, truth can be stranger- or in this case, more interesting- than fiction.
Pardon my little tangent here: Recently I attended an education conference where one of the speakers, Dr. Carroll Smith, talked about the importance of narrative in our learning. What is 'narrative' exactly? According to Wiki: "A narrative or story is any report of connected events, real or imaginary, presented in a sequence of written or spoken words, and/or still or moving images." In the talk by Dr. Smith, I learned that the amygdala (small portion of the brain that deals with emotions) is activated when reading a story just as if it were happening in reality. The emotions are firing 'mirror neurons' in our brains, allowing us to mentally and emotionally connect with the situation. Those connections are what help us retain what we read. Okay, back to the book and my thoughts of it.
I was interested to read about the last crossing of the Lusitania because it is given such a small part in the history books. Interestingly, I did not know {rather I did not recall} that there was a span of almost two years from the sinking of the Lusitania to the United States entering the war. On top of that many more civil ships were sunk by the Germans, killing more Americans, after the sinking of the Lusitania, than I had previously known. 
A general curiosity started me on the book. The writing style and personal stories of the people who were on the Lusitania (the captain, crew, passengers), who had command of the Lusitania (administration at Cunard), who were in charge of military movements (British prominent leaders, Room 40), and even the behind-the-scenes take on the German's who were influential in the whole thing (the submarine captain, military leaders, and others) was what kept me going. There is a good portion that talks of Woodrow Wilson's life during this time. 
Some of the passengers were from places I've lived: Oregon, Cleveland, Ohio, and Wyoming. There were so many different reasons for making the trip via ship: fastest ship at the time, most secure (they thought for sure there'd be military escorts), and dare I say, naiveté. These people were on their way to see family, to make business transactions, to get a vacation, and so many more reasons. 
Really appreciate this book. There were some points that I am really unsure why they were included, other than to get a full sense of the times, but they were not distracting. I'd read that another reader did not care for the inclusion of Wilson's love-life {it's so super mild; nothing inappropriate} but I found it to be a new view on Wilson. A side I'd not known about. 
The book includes the following at the back: Notes, Bibliography, Index, Reader's Guide, A Conversation with Erik Larson, and An Essay from Erik Larson: "Where Ideas Come From"
I am very much looking forward to my next Larson read: In the Garden of Beasts. 

**Disclaimer: I received this book for free for review from Blogging for Books. Do you blog? Do you love books? Then sign up! 
No compensation was given and I'm never required to submit a positive review.