Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson. 

4/5 rating. 

Book #31 of 2020. Read May 17, 2020.

This is the true story of the Lusitania’s last voyage. Erik uses accounts of both passengers of the Lusitania and U-20, the U-Boat that would eventually sink the elegant ocean-liner, to recount the last days of the fateful journeys of these two vessels.

I learned so much I didn’t know about the Lusitania and World War I in this book. It is wild how many different factors had to converge in order for U-20 to come upon the ship and successfully torpedo it: many lacks of judgement by several different parties, delays, different weather conditions forcing slow-downs. If any of these had happened only slightly differently, these two vessels would never have met.

As they did, however, the sinking of the Lusitania was the first domino to fall in the decision of America to join in WWI. While it did not by itself push anyone heavily into getting involved, once factors started forcing hard decisions a few years later, it certainly was still in everyone’s mind: the way that only a needless act of terrorism costing 1,000 lives can.

If you are at all interested in history, I definitely recommend reading this book. I still think Erik’s book “The Devil in the White City” is better, but he does much the same in this book of taking a non-fiction book and making it read like a novel.

IG Link.