What is the author's tone in the book, Dead Wake?

Dead Wake by Erik Larson is a non-fiction book about the sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat in 1915 during World War I. Larson has worked as a writer for Time Magazine and for the Wall Street Journal. He has also written a number of other non-fiction books. Most notably, he authored the book, “In the Garden of the Beasts,” which is a story about the only American ambassador to Nazi Germany. The ambassador and his family lived in Berlin in 1933 and saw the rise of the Third Reich and the reality of who the Nazis really were.

Larson is obviously deeply interested in world history and especially in the great wars of the twentieth century and the lead ups to them. Larson has done extensive research in the writing of “Dead Wake” and the reader will readily see that he has taken care to thoroughly cover every aspect of it. He writes with an unbiased tone and provides the facts as he found them. This removal of self-interest from his writing is testament to his career as an outstanding reporter and writer for the news media.

Writing the book was an exercise in discovery for Larson. He explains that through his research he learned that he had always been wrong about how America became entangled in World War I. Like most people, he thought that America declared war immediately after the sinking of the Lusitania but learned that it was two years later. Although the Lusitania disaster was a factor in America declaring war on Germany, it was one of many reasons.

Larson found that the Lusitania was an important story that had vanished from the world’s consciousness and never got the attention it deserved. He has righted that wrong. He writes this missing piece of history with great respect for those lost in the incident and for the magnificent ship that was a casualty of war.