Erik Larson: Dead Wake

Meet your next audiobook: Dead Wake written by Erik Larson. A solid pick in History.

Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds”, and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. He knew, moreover, that his ship–the fastest then in service–could outrun any threat. Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger’s U-boat,but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their ways toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small–hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more–all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history. It is a story that many of us think we know but don’t, and Erik Larson tells it high-stakesly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour, mystery, and real-life suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope Riddle to President Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love. absorbing and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a From the number-one New York Times popular author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania , published to coincide with the one-hundredth anniversary of the disaster. On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious.

Audio files are hosted for direct playback so you can jump between chapters without downloading a zip.

Stream Dead Wake free on RealAudiobooks — open chapters below and start whenever you like.