And in a larger sense, the disaster could be said to have cost thousands of additional casualties in collateral damage: Anguish over the sinking, and anger at German perfidy, eventually helped prod the determinedly neutral President Woodrow Wilson to bring the United States into World War I. A total of 1,198 people, including 123 Americans, were lost when a German U-Boat sank the Lusitania off Ireland's west coast. In his gripping new examination of the last days of what was then the fastest cruise ship in the world, Larson ( Devil in the White City, In the Garden of Beasts) brings the past stingingly alive. Few of the present-day joggers and cyclists who pass by might recall that a century ago, on May 1, 1915, the Lusitania set sail from this berth on her last doomed voyage.Įrik Larson is here to remind us. Like whispers of the past, the engraved names of the shipping companies Cunard and White Star remain barely legible atop its rusted iron gate. Pier 54 on the Hudson River in Manhattan is padlocked and forgotten now. Your purchase helps support NPR programming.
Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Dead Wake Subtitle The Last Crossing of the Lusitania Author Erik Larson
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