It is a story that many of us think we know but don't, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope to President Woodrow Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the...

"The famous war correspondent delivers an edge-of-your seat account of the naval chase and battle to take out one of Hitler's most powerful warships. The Bismarck wasn't just any warship. Its guns were much stronger and more accurate than any others in its day-meaning it could easily sink enemy ships without getting in range of their fire. It was one of Hitler's most powerful weapons, and the Allied forces had to put it out of commission-before they...

Describes the campaign in World War II to sink the Bismarck and the efforts to salvage its remains.

Documents the experiences of an extraordinary family whose seven sons and neighbors from a Mathews County, Virginia, community served as Merchant Marines and in 1942 defended the coastal United States against a U-boat assault.

Follows the daring patrol of the U-96, one of the famed German U-boats known as the "gray wolves." The crew is graphically portrayed in a life-and-death struggle, challenging the British Navy at every turn.

"On May 7, 1915, the German U-boat U-20 fired a torpedo into the side of the passenger liner R.M.S. Lusitania on its way to Liverpool, England. This act of war had a terrible toll--of the 1,962 passengers and crew, 1,191 lost their lives, many of them women and children. One of the passengers on the ship was Charles E. Lauriat, Jr., a rare book dealer who traveled regularly to London for business. When the German stated that any ships of Great Britain...