First things first, Erik Larson knows how to research an issue. Sometimes you forget that these things in his books happened to real people. Like Deadwake (you can read that review here), Thunderstruck involves ships and transatlantic crossings. But the similarities really end there.Thunderstruck follows the progress of two seemingly unconnected events. First, the development of wireless telegraphy by inventor Guglielmo Marconi and the turbulent marriage of Hawley Harvey Crippen and Cora Crippen. As Marconi races against critics and arrogant scientists to achieve wireless transmissions across the Atlantic, Crippen and Cora move from New York to London to pursue Crippen's career in homeopathy and mail order pharmaceuticals. Cora, unable to accept her lack of talent, spends copious amounts of her husband's money in pursuing Opera and then local cabaret gigs to little result. She is presented as domineering and belittling of her husband, engaged in extramarital flirtations and affairs. Crippen, small and meek finally takes up with his secretary. And, well, then Cora goes missing, Crippen gets on a Marconi equipped vessel, and the gory remains of a body are found in his basement. Crippen and his secretary are pursued through wireless technology over the Atlantic Ocean and arrive, unwittingly, to be delivered in to the hands of the authorities, while a rapt public follows their 11 day journey through news reports made possible by the Marconi technology, thus cementing the use of Marconi's system into the hearts and minds of the once skeptical public. Thoroughly researched and well written, Larson does not disappoint.
4/5 Stars.
Nerd alert. I love history and I love military history, but my brain always seems to jump from the American Civil War to WWII. I recently read a book about the Napoleonic Wars in Europe (you can read that review here). After reading this book, it seems that Europe was still confused about whether they were fighting the Napoleonic wars in 1915. Trench warfare is awful.Anyway, a lot of the assumptions I had about the Lusitania were wrong. I thought the US went to war right after the Lusitania was sunk. Wrong. I thought the Lusitania was a US ship. Wrong. So amid all of these wrong facts, I somehow forgot that in May 1915, the Lusitania was filled with people. Mothers, fathers, children, babies, sons, wives, Vanderbilts! And that's all so sad and tragic. Larson really hits home with the descriptions of families trying to stay together as the ship went down. Even though the water was warmer than the Titanic sinking, the speed at which the ship sank, the 55 degree water, and the distance from shore really made surviving difficult for the passengers. The narration of the audio version was slightly irritating as it was a bit too over dramatic, but all in all I really liked this book and learning more about the events precipitating WWI.
4/5 Stars.
