A lesson learned from DEAD WAKE: THE LAST CROSSING OF THE LUSITANIA, by Erik Larson
Ordinary people ignore global events at their own peril. One great advantage of having a local paperback bookstore is being able to pretty cheaply catch up on popular older books that I missed out on, and over the past few days I breezed through Erik Larson's 2015 bestseller Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania . Larson is a famous example of a "narrative historian," a term historians used to describe a writer who focuses on pleasing the masses. To that end, Larson is willing to write his books in a way that focuses on telling stories and increasing tension, and he's also willing to speculate on people's thoughts and feelings, in ways that make professional historians shudder (as obviously not all that stuff is backed up by solid evidence), but which is fun and generally inoffensive. The sinking of the famous ship Lusitania has become an historical footnote as one of the events that contributed to America joining World War I on the side of the Allie...