Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

A nice experience of reading

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 author’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. ‘Yet among his peers and crew Schwieger was...