That is the best word to describe this book.įrom page one, the story slowly builds to a crescendo that is searing, heartbreaking, tragic, and absolutely frustrating-because at so many points along the way, the sinking of the famed passenger ship Lusitania by a German U-boat on eleven miles off the southern coast of Ireland could have been prevented.Įven though we all know the ending, author Eric Larson is a masterful storyteller using a novelist's favorite tool in this nonfiction tome: Each chapter tells the tale from a different point of view, including the Lusitania's Captain William Thomas Turner, various passengers on ship who are both famous and ordinary, the German U-boat's Captain Walther Schwieger and his crew, the cipher decoders in Britain's top secret Room 40, and President Woodrow Wilson, who was grief-stricken over the death of his wife but soon fell in love (as in head over heels) with another woman.
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