It’s not my intent to write definitive history. ‘Dead Wake’ isn’t a definitive history of the sinking of the Lusitania. It’s my account. Erik Larson Read Quote
One of the really amazing things about the Lusitania saga was that, at the time, there existed in the admiralty a super-secret spy entity known as ‘Room 40’. Erik Larson Read Quote
I do think hubris played a role here as well, the belief that the Lusitania was too big and too fast to ever be caught by any submarine, and that, in any case, no U-boat commander would think to attack the ship because to do so would violate the long-held rules governing naval warfare against merchant shipping. Erik Larson Read Quote
I knew Berlin would have to become a kind of character in my new book, ‘In the Garden of Beasts’. I had felt likewise about Chicago when I wrote ‘The Devil in the White City’ and Galveston with ‘Isaac’s Storm’. Erik Larson Read Quote
The telephone call that forever changed the lives of the Dodd family of Chicago came at noon on Thursday, June 8, 1933, as William E. Dodd sat at his desk at the University of Chicago. Erik Larson Read Quote
I was a promiscuous reader. I loved Nancy Drew books and Tom Swift – never the Hardy Boys – but I also read Dumas, Dickens, Poe, Conan Doyle, and Cornelius Ryan’s war books. As to favorite character: I’m torn between Nancy, on whom I had an unseemly crush, and Edmond Dantes, the Count of Monte Cristo. Erik Larson Read Quote
I don’t listen to music when I write, but I do turn on appropriate music when I read portions of my manuscripts back to myself – kind of like adding a soundtrack to help shape mood. Erik Larson Read Quote
The Lusitania is important, of course, because this is where Germany began its maritime campaign using this brand-new weapon. We have to appreciate how the submarine, as a weapon against civilian shipping, was a particularly novel thing – so novel that many people at the time dismissed its potential power, its potential relevance. Erik Larson Read Quote
In 1900, 45 steamship lines served Galveston. Twenty-six foreign governments had consulates there. The storm damaged its reputation as a safe place for substantial investment by railroads then seeking to dominate various trans-continental routes. Erik Larson Read Quote
The sinking of the Lusitania wasn’t the proximal cause for the U.S. entering WWI. It was almost two years between the sinking and the war declaration, and President Wilson’s request for war never mentions the Lusitania. Erik Larson Read Quote
