Reading a really good one right now: Thunderstruck by Erik Larson

[Lex]

I am a fan Larson's other books, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America and his book about the great Galveston hurricane at the turn of the 20th century, Isaac's Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History.

This one I haven't finished yet, but Thunderstuck is written in the same engaging way as the previous two. At first blush, it may sound boring, but it is not! There are lots of interesting things happening--and two main themes are wonderfully grounded with the details of the time and both are on a collision course with each other. One of the main subjects is Marconi's race to perfect wireless radio transmisson; the other is cold-blooded murderer Dr. H.H. Crippen.

I didn't realize that at the time Marconi was so dreamy (well sort of) and young (definitely) when he was developing his wireless machine:




Anyway, here's part of the review by Publishers Weekly because I did a sort of a bad job explaining the book:

In this splendid, beautifully written followup to his blockbuster thriller, Devil in the White City, Erik Larson again unites the dual stories of two disparate men, one a genius and the other a killer. The genius is Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of wireless communication. The murderer is the notorious Englishman Dr. H.H. Crippen. Scientists had dreamed for centuries of capturing the power of lightning and sending electrical currents through the ether. Yes, the great cable strung across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean could send messages thousands of miles, but the holy grail was a device that could send wireless messages anywhere in the world. Late in the 19th century, Europe's most brilliant theoretical scientists raced to unlock the secret of wireless communication. Guglielmo Marconi, impatient, brash, relentless and in his early 20s, achieved the astonishing breakthrough in September 1895. His English detractors were incredulous. He was a foreigner and, even worse, an Italian! Marconi himself admitted that he was not a great scientist or theorist. Instead, he exemplified the Edisonian model of tedious, endless trial and error.Despite Marconi's achievements, it took a sensational murder to bring unprecedented worldwide attention to his invention.

More:
http://www.amazon.com/Thunderstruck-Erik-Larson/dp/1400080665/sr=8-1/qid=1164085226/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-8857895-1355112?ie=UTF8&s=books

:hi:

[murielm99]

1. He is a wonderful author,

isn't he?

Not many people can make non-fiction so spellbinding. We need people like him teaching history, since so many students find it boring.