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4.6 out of 5 stars
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Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

byErik Larson
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Top positive review

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Yiqun Pan
5.0 out of 5 starsA nice experience of reading
Reviewed in the United States ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ on May 15, 2017
The book is about:
The book Dead wake is a historically based novel- like non-fiction that relates to the sink of Lusitania, one of the major reasons why did America get involved in the world one. Unlike the textbook or the objective documents that represent the official recording of this event. This book gradually brings the whole events out from all the small perspectives of people who got involved or lost their lives in it. The authorโ€™s big motivation for writing this book is to let people experience the whole events from the basic stories. Normally the information we received from those world war 1 documents is simple and unemotional. Without the name of dead people, there are not strong feelings through reading the death numbers. Without the background information, there is no explanation to why the boat was sunk by torpedoes. The author of this book drew the world of readers back to the last century, the happiness, desires, hopelessness from people are all seems close enough to touch. Even though the book itself focused mostly on the Boat and the submarine U-20 which sunk it, the characterization of other passengers on Lusitania is attractive and interesting. The movement of different organization and famous people such as American president Wilson were all caught by Erik Larson.

More than a normal non-fiction, Dead Wake shows its strength on imitating the humanity and atmospheres. The whole book is having a comparably easy and comfortable rhythm at the first chapter. Rather than just talking about the big historical event itself, Erik Larson fills in more small details and personal life parts into the skeleton of the book, to make it more vivid. On the other hand, the people on lusitania are not all the characters he focuses on. For example, the one who received the order to sank the boat with torpedoes, Captain Schwieger of the submarine U-20 is actually a pretty hard-working and nice captain in his normal life. โ€˜Yet among his peers and crew Schwieger was known for this kindness and good humor and for maintaining a cheerful atmosphere aboard his submarine.โ€™ However, the war is cruel and cold-bloody, the perspective of enemies helped me understand the conception of the war better. Overall, this book is pretty nice book that can bring the readers into the experiences of the events happened in the past. Also, for one who is learning the First World War, this book gave me more new knowledge and brought me a historical event that I did not even hear before. The relationship between this book and the First world war build me a bridge on the way of studying this part of the history.

Relationship to the world war 1
Before America participated in the first world war, German started to attack any boats that had the British relationships near the British sea areas. They posted the news on the newspaper and this truly caused a lot of people to change their ideas. However, the passengers on lusitania didnโ€™t see the risk they taking, because the boat they are taking was having the greatest speed in the whole world thanks to its newest technology. All the people believed that there werenโ€™t any submarines able to catch the boat due to its unbelievable speed at that time. Unfortunately, the extrema of fog happened on the open sea of the Ireland. This accidentally triggered the following tragedy. The meeting of U-20 submarine and lusitania was not predicted by room 40, an organization which mainly focused the interception of telegrams from German in that period this time. This time, the speed of lusitania did not function as much as they thought. The boat is stucked in the fog, without the eyesight for speeding up. The U-20 caught the boat and gave the first torpedo under the order of captain Schwieger. The boat was hugely impacted and shook. People were running around and spreading out the scare. Then, not until most of them reached the bridge of the boat, the second the torpedo was launched without any hesitation. This one ensure the sink of the boat and caused nine tenth of the passengers on the boat fell into the deep water with the boat. Among the 1200 passengers who died in this event, there were nearly a hundred Americans. Only 300 corpse of were found after the boat was sunk by the U-20. This, undoubtedly, stimulate the anger of Americans. All the citizens want to give Germany punishment for their evil behaves. By the fact of other events, America was involved into this war finally.

The reflections after reading the books
Although I am reading a book of historical event, the feeling I received from the book is not limited on just a historical event. It is something deeper and was truly impacting my emotions. After reading the 300 pages in the book, most passengers became true people who used to live somewhere in the world vividly. I would love to talk with them if I was there. However, 1200 lives were end only because of two torpedoes. One of the greatest boat at that time was sunk. The declaration of Germany proved that they need an enemy who could teach them an unforgettable lesson. And that was what America did. I was usually imagining that what kind of fear was spreading at the last moment before the boat sunk. The mixture of 1200 peopleโ€™s emotion before their death must be filled by darkness and blood. Many people on the boat was trying to look for someone they knew on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The captain of the boat was not concerning of the disaster at all. No one could predict the existence of both fog and German submarine until they met. โ€˜Turner had no concern about the German warning. Shortly before departure, he was standing on the shipโ€™s promenade deck, talking with Alfred Vanderbilt and Charles Frohman, when one of the ship-news man --- apparently not Jack Lawrence --- approached and asked Vanderbilt if he thought heโ€™d be as lucky this time as he had been in deciding not to sail on the Titanic. Vanderbilt smiled but said nothing.โ€™ The people on the whole boat could not noticed the event. How many people died without noticing their situation? This is my biggest question after reading the book.

Lusitania was definitely a boat that can let the people inside feel the atmosphere of happiness. โ€˜โ€œShips do have personalities,โ€ wrote Jack Lawrence, the shipping writer for he New York Evening Mail. Some ships โ€œhave warm, friendly atmosphere while others are only steel plates riveted around throbbing turbines.โ€โ€™ There were some children and infants on the boat and only one tenth of them finally survived. โ€˜The passenger manifest listed ninety-five children and thirty-nine infantsโ€™ It told me that no one can be ignored by the war when the enemy catches you. The fearness of war is remained in my mind by this book after seeing the innocent death under the big environment of the war. Thanks to this book, I learnt the fearness of the war.

The reasons for people to read this book
In conclusion, this book is definitely recommended for readers, even for those who are not interested in the world war one. From my perspective, the book focused more on people instead of events. The details in a personโ€™s life usually appear for characterizing the personality of this person. The intention of For example, โ€˜Lauriat took the scrapbooks back to his home in Cambridge, where he inspected them in the company of his wife, Marian. He then packed them carefully, in his extension suitcase, and locked it. At the station later that night, he checked his trunk and shoe box for transport direct to the lusitania but held back his other three pieces. He kept these with him in the calendar.โ€™ the characteristics of one of the passengers on the boat, Lauriat, a bookseller who usually went to Britain for transporting books, is fully shown for the readers. The introduction of boats or submarines are also comprehensive and informational for those people who want to learn more about the world war One. โ€˜U-boats in fact traveled underwater as little as possible, typically only in extreme weather or when attacking ships or dodging destroyers.โ€™ The professional explanation like this line appeared commonly in the book. In short, the book is fascinating and interesting, feeling the past historical events from it is the attraction no readers can reject.
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Top critical review

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B. Kaufman
3.0 out of 5 starsErik Larson's books are great, but the printing of this one sucked
Reviewed in the United States ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ on October 12, 2022
You need to let the printer know that on something like 10 of the pages, the last line was cut off. That was very disappointing. That is the only time this has happened with an Erik Larson book.
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From the United States

April L. Hamilton
2.0 out of 5 stars A Rare Larson Miss
Reviewed in the United States ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ on February 24, 2016
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I feel guilty about giving this book a negative review because I've thoroughly enjoyed Larson's Devil in the White City and Isaac's Storm, and generally enjoy well-written books about little known, interesting historical events. But this was just too scattershot and, though I hate to say it, boring. I couldn't even finish it.

I get that Larson was trying to bring the personal stories of the people directly involved to life by giving some background on each one, how and why each person came to the Lusitania. But I think that's why the book fails.

Where Devil in the White City and Isaac's Storm primarily focus on a single, central historical character and then flesh out the background and context with accounts of others who were in some way related to, or affected by, the actions of the main person, in Dead Wake it seems like there wasn't a great deal of information available on any one, single person so Larson wrote a sort of 'cast of tens' series of narrative threads. I assume those threads all intersect at the point where Lusitania sinks, but I gave up on this book at about the halfway point because frankly, I just wasn't interested in any of the individual threads.

I am still very much interested in the historical context and events that led up to the sinking of the Lusitania, but at the point where I realized all my questions would be answered within 20 minutes of Googling, I just couldn't bring myself to continue the book. Life's too short to force myself to finish a book I'm not enjoying.
One person found this helpful
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B Smith
2.0 out of 5 stars Sadly, It's Just Not That Interesting
Reviewed in the United States ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ on March 19, 2015
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I read "The Devil in the White City," a fantastic book, which is why I bought this book. I didn't know much at all about the Lusitania. I was excited to read about it, because it's a fascinating subject. The sinking of that ship was pretty much the incident that brought America into the first world war, but the book spends very little time exploring anything of any historical significance. What's written about the American president at the time, for example, concerns strictly his personal life, probably something unique to this particular tale of this particular tragedy. That's the nature of the problem I have with this book. It is a collection of very insignificant stories surrounding the sinking of the Lusitania, and it seems they were chosen solely because they are 'new' entries into the written history of the incident. You will spend a lot of time reading personal histories of passengers, and not famous or at all interesting people. Too much of the book is devoted to the histories of unknown architects, book collectors, bicycle salesmen, etc.. The truly fascinating parts of the story are shallow, Cliff Note shallow.

All in all, I'm disappointed. I'm not even going to finish the book. The ship is sunk and I have yet to care about any of the characters, nor do I care about the significance of the incident. The book feels like the author specifically mined history for stories nobody bothered to tell over the last 100 years. Maybe it's New material to true buffs of this tragedy, but as a lone book to read about this ship wreck, it's flat and unemotional.
10 people found this helpful
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ALH
2.0 out of 5 stars If You Like Detail...
Reviewed in the United States ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ on October 20, 2015
Verified Purchase
My book club chose this book to read and discuss, so I purchased the Kindle version and was generally satisfied with the first 50 pages or so. After that, however, it read like a telephone book. I found myself skimming or glossing over much of the book in an attempt to avoid inertia. In all fairness, I would have preferred at least a modicum of a story or narrative behind the actual incident, but that was not the author's goal. None of the characters were well developed, except perhaps Woodrow Wilson. I never realized how little I knew about this president, and the author certainly opened my eyes when he discussed the personal life of our 28th president. Other than Wilson, however, the passengers aboard the Lusitania were mostly a collection of facts and figures, making it difficult for me to establish a caring connection with any of them. For those interested in every minute detail surrounding the Lusitania, this book has it all. It was thoroughly researched and meticulously written. I learned a lot about submarines, maritime codes, and nautical terminology, but unlike the vast majority of this book's reviewers, I feel as though I wasted time that could otherwise have been spent reading the next book on my book club list.
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K. Greene
2.0 out of 5 stars Good book, bad printing
Reviewed in the United States ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ on May 14, 2022
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I enjoyed the book, but several of the pages (maybe about 20?) were missing their last line, like it got cut off. Really frustrating.
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K. Greene
2.0 out of 5 stars Good book, bad printing
Reviewed in the United States ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ on May 14, 2022
I enjoyed the book, but several of the pages (maybe about 20?) were missing their last line, like it got cut off. Really frustrating.
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SoCal
2.0 out of 5 stars Could get through it
Reviewed in the United States ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ on June 25, 2022
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Too much like a military history book. Not what Iโ€™m interested in.
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Mike Hoyt
2.0 out of 5 stars Can't milk suspense out of such a well known event
Reviewed in the United States ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ on April 17, 2015
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This is a quick and entertaining read, with a few historical insights, but nothing earth-shattering. The problem is that you already know what's going to happen, so there isn't any real tension or suspense. Which is quite unlike "The Devil in the White City" which just gripped me. Nor did I find myself relating to the people in Dead Wake, the Lusitania's Captain is actually a fairly minor character and we learn little about him, the passengers are likewise too thinly described (and there are so many of them!) that it's hard to really care about them. I did NOT find myself hoping that so and so would survive, or caring if they found a loved one, there just wasn't enough depth to them. And on the German side, we only hear about the submarine Captain, and actually very little about him either. And there is really nothing at all about the broader idea of naval blockade and submarine warfare. Bottom line, an easy book to take to the pool, but it's no where near Larson's best.
2 people found this helpful
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TEQ
2.0 out of 5 stars Swing & a Miss
Reviewed in the United States ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ on June 14, 2015
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As a blue water sailor, I enjoy sea stories and had great hopes for this book. Erik Larson certainly had great material to work with here, but I did not really get a sense of the ship & submarine he depicts, and their unfortunate intersection. He conveys events and the characters aboard each vessel, but I just couldn't see, smell, taste or feel things in this book. Larson also diverts to extended and irritating discourse on US president Woodrow Wilson's romance with Edith Boiling, suggesting that Wilson simply stopped being president during this period. I have no idea why this was important the the story of Lusitania, nor did it have any significance on the world stage of 1915 and World War One. No are any photographs included in the Kindle edition of this book to help out. Walter Lord set the gold standard for disaster at sea stories with his account of the Titanic, A Night to Remember. No one's come close, since. Larson swings hard here but misses, ultimately.
8 people found this helpful
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Geoffrey T. Harter
2.0 out of 5 stars Not at all as advertised
Reviewed in the United States ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ on January 13, 2022
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Well, you get what you pay for, but not what you expect. Very worn, pages yellowed (published 2015) and many folded over, clearly a very well-read library-type book. Does not at all look "very good". Very disappointing.
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mar
2.0 out of 5 stars Damaged book
Reviewed in the United States ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ on May 8, 2022
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There were pages missing. I Loved the book.
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K. Foley
2.0 out of 5 stars Historical, Factual
Reviewed in the United States ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ on April 16, 2021
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This is a great novel. Understanding the sinking of this great ship and the political implications leading up to it and following it. It is a very good insight into some international politics and why some notable decisions are made that can affect people's lives when they become pawns in a process.
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