Chapter 37 - Isaac's Storm

I was speaking with a friend recently who is part of a non-fiction book club. While they really haven't defined themselves that way, it seems that what they primarily read is non-fiction. Their most recent book was The Demon Of Unrest by Erik Larson which I have not read yet. It started me thinking about how much I have always enjoyed Erik Larson's books.

I was first introduced to Erik Larson by my youngest daughter who gave me her copy of The Devil In The White City and told me I had to read it. From there I read his others and each is more interesting than the one before. Here are Larson's books which I can recommend from experiential knowledge. (I'll comment on The Demon Of Unrest after I've read it.)

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America - How can you resist a title like that? In the late 1880's Daniel Hudson Burnham, an architect, was charged with the overwhelming job of organizing multiple talented architects and engineers in transforming a swampy park into a White City for the Chicago World's Fair. At the same time a sadistic doctor, Henry H. Holmes, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium. Larson introduced many historical characters in this study of the Gilded Age.

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin - William Dodd, a poor university professor, became America's ambassador to Berlin in 1933 mostly because no one else wanted the job. As he and his family witnessed the growing atrocities towards Jewish citizens in Germany, Dodd reported them and was dismissed as being naive by the Roosevelt administration. In the meantime his children become enamored of the glitter of Nazi Germany. This is not to be missed if you enjoy World War II history.

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania - The Lusitania was a passenger ship, richly appointed, carrying passengers from New York to Liverpool in May, 1915. Only 9 months since the beginning of World War I, Germany had already declared the waters around Britain a war zone. As the ship carried a large amount of infants and children, the captain, William Thomas Turner, strongly believed that Germany would respect the maritime rules governing civilian ships. Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to prove otherwise and ended up sinking the beautiful ship. Who knew what? Why was Germany so willing to violate maritime laws? What did it mean to the United States? This book tells all and has more than a few surprises.

Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History - On the morning of September 8, 1900, everyone was expecting a peaceful, sunny day. Even Isaac Cline, the meteorologist for the National Weather Bureau had a hard time believing that the growing winds would bring anything serious to the gulf coast of Texas. Within hours Galveston was besieged by the storm of the century which not only destroyed the town but killed over 6,000 people. Here is the story of what happened, before and after the Galveston Hurricane and how it influenced hurricane tracking and reporting today.

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz - Due to a crisis of confidence in 1940, Neville Chamberlain was removed as the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Winston Churchill voted in. Within one day of becoming Prime Minister Hitler's Nazi army invaded Holland and Belgium having already taken Poland and Czechoslovakia. For the next 12 months, Germany would relentlessly bomb England killing over 40,000 civilians. How did Churchill inspire fortitude and fearlessness in his fellow citizens? Larson addresses this as well as what was happening in Churchill's own family at the time and his political courtship of Roosevelt as well. This may well be my favorite Erik Larson book thus far.

Have you read any of Erik Larson's books? Let me know which ones!