Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larsen and Dead Wake: the Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larsen

I was waiting to read Dead Wake, Erik Larsen's most recent (2015) best seller. This one is on the sinking of the Lusitania.  But I was at the bottom of the request list for the library's copy.  Dead Wake would be a long wait.  So, I read an earlier Larsen story, Isaac's Storm, of an even earlier disaster.  Then, when my turn arrived, I read Dead Wake.

The earlier book, Isaac's Storm, was published in 1999, and it was Larsen's first best seller.  The Washington Post hailed it "the Jaws of hurricane yarns."  The Great Galveston Hurricane reached landfall on September 8, 1900, becoming the deadliest hurricane in U. S. history.  At the time, Galveston, located on little more than a Texas sandbar, was a boom town.  Trade made it prosperous, and success made it complacent.  Coincidentally, the National Weather Service, which became a civilian agency in 1890, didn't like to alarm the public.  Information sharing was severely tested, and tragedy was the result.  The "Isaac" of the story was Isaac Cline, who was the bureau's resident meteorologist in Galveston.

Larsen likes to tell parallel stories and personal stories too, enriching the narrative.  One parallel story in Dead Wake is how information was amassed by Room 40, a secret group under the British Admiralty, one with access to a German naval code book.  The last voyage of the British-owned Lusitania, we remember, takes place in the first year of World War I.  It was a time when the United States was still neutral.  Larsen asserts that the British were able to track the whereabouts of U-20, the German u-boat that would eventually sink the massive ocean liner with just one torpedo.  Again, the lack of shared information was catastrophic.  Still, the resultant death and destruction was a shameless act of war, certainly a horrific act of terrorism on a civilian populace.  By the way, the term, "Dead wake" is that fading disturbance of water made by a torpedo.

Both tales, both tragedies, are all the more wrenching and inspiring because of the personal stories that Larsen shares.  His research, as always, captures the imagination.  You get to know people: children at play, families together, people and their professions - all at the cusp of a life shattering event.  These individuals accept fate or fight against it, and luck always has a role to play. Both stories read like fiction and are told with detail, insight, and compassion.