[PDF] Dead Wake eBook

Author : Erik Larson
Publisher : Crown
Page : 481 pages
File Size : 26,48 MB
Release : 2015-03-10
Category : History
ISBN : 0553446754

GET BOOK

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania “Both terrifying and enthralling.”—Entertainment Weekly “Thrilling, dramatic and powerful.”—NPR “Thoroughly engrossing.”—George R.R. Martin On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds”—the fastest liner then in service—and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger’s U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small—hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more—all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history. 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 widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love. Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster whose intimate details and true meaning have long been obscured by history. Finalist for the Washington State Book Award • One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Miami Herald, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, LibraryReads, Indigo

Author : Bruce Jackson
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
Page : 388 pages
File Size : 19,19 MB
Release : 1999
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780820321585

GET BOOK

Making it in Hell, says Bruce Jackson, is the spirit behind the sixty-five work songs gathered in this eloquent dispatch from a brutal era of prison life in the Deep South. Through engagingly documented song arrangements and profiles of their singers, Jackson shows how such pieces as "Hammer Ring," "Ration Blues," "Yellow Gal," and "Jody's Got My Wife and Gone" are like no other folk music forms: they are distinctly African in heritage, diminished in power and meaning outside their prison context, and used exclusively by black convicts. The songs helped workers through the rigors of cane cutting, logging, and cotton picking. Perhaps most important, they helped resolve the men's hopes and longings and allowed them a subtle outlet for grievances they could never voice when face-to-face with their jailers.

Author : Erik Larson
Publisher : Crown
Page : 481 pages
File Size : 48,88 MB
Release : 2006-10-24
Category : History
ISBN : 0307351920

GET BOOK

A true story of love, murder, and the end of the world’s “great hush.” In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men—Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication—whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time. Set in Edwardian London and on the stormy coasts of Cornwall, Cape Cod, and Nova Scotia, Thunderstruck evokes the dynamism of those years when great shipping companies competed to build the biggest, fastest ocean liners; scientific advances dazzled the public with visions of a world transformed; and the rich outdid one another with ostentatious displays of wealth. Against this background, Marconi races against incredible odds and relentless skepticism to perfect his invention: the wireless, a prime catalyst for the emergence of the world we know today. Meanwhile, Crippen, “the kindest of men,” nearly commits the perfect murder. With his unparalleled narrative skills, Erik Larson guides us through a relentlessly suspenseful chase over the waters of the North Atlantic. Along the way, he tells of a sad and tragic love affair that was described on the front pages of newspapers around the world, a chief inspector who found himself strangely sympathetic to the killer and his lover, and a driven and compelling inventor who transformed the way we communicate.

Author : Bill Sloan
Publisher : Bantam
Page : 562 pages
File Size : 31,40 MB
Release : 2008-01-29
Category : History
ISBN : 0553585673

GET BOOK

A gripping narrative of unprecedented valor and personal courage, here is the story of the first American battle of World War II: the battle for Wake Island. Based on firsthand accounts from long-lost survivors who have emerged to tell about it, this stirring tale of the “Alamo of the Pacific” will reverberate for generations to come. On December 8, 1941, just five hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes attacked a remote U.S. outpost in the westernmost reaches of the Pacific. It was the beginning of an incredible sixteen-day fight for Wake Island, a tiny but strategically valuable dot in the ocean. Unprepared for the stunning assault, the small battalion was dangerously outnumbered and outgunned. But they compensated with a surplus of bravery and perseverance, waging an extraordinary battle against all odds. When it was over, a few hundred American Marines, sailors, and soldiers, along with a small army of heroic civilian laborers, had repulsed enemy forces several thousand strong––but it was still not enough. Among the Marines was twenty-year-old PFC Wiley Sloman. By Christmas Day, he lay semiconscious in the sand, struck by enemy fire. Another day would pass before he was found—stripped of his rifle and his uniform. Shocked to realize he hadn’t awakened to victory, Sloman wondered: Had he been given up for dead—and had the Marines simply given up? In this riveting account, veteran journalist Bill Sloan re-creates this history-making battle, the crushing surrender, and the stories of the uncommonly gutsy men who fought it. From the civilians who served as gunmen, medics, and even preachers, to the daily grind of life on an isolated island—literally at the ends of the earth—to the agony of POW camps, here we meet our heroes and confront the enemy face-to-face, bayonet to bayonet.

Author : Kevin Toolis
Publisher : Da Capo Press
Page : 194 pages
File Size : 15,52 MB
Release : 2018-02-27
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0306921456

GET BOOK

An intimate, lyrical look at the ancient rite of the Irish wake--and the Irish way of overcoming our fear of death Death is a whisper for most of us. Instinctively we feel we should dim the lights, pull the curtains, and speak softly. But on a remote island off the coast of Ireland's County Mayo, death has a louder voice. Each day, along with reports of incoming Atlantic storms, the local radio runs a daily roll call of the recently departed. The islanders go in great numbers, young and old alike, to be with their dead. They keep vigil with the corpse and the bereaved company through the long hours of the night. They dig the grave with their own hands and carry the coffin on their own shoulders. The islanders cherish the dead--and amid the sorrow, they celebrate life, too. In My Father's Wake, acclaimed author and award-winning filmmaker Kevin Toolis unforgettably describes his own father's wake and explores the wider history and significance of this ancient and eternal Irish ritual. Perhaps we, too, can all find a better way to deal with our mortality -- by living and loving as the Irish do.

Author : Erik Larson
Publisher : Crown
Page : 609 pages
File Size : 28,73 MB
Release : 2020-02-25
Category : History
ISBN : 038534872X

GET BOOK

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers an intimate chronicle of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz—an inspiring portrait of courage and leadership in a time of unprecedented crisis “One of [Erik Larson’s] best books yet . . . perfectly timed for the moment.”—Time • “A bravura performance by one of America’s greatest storytellers.”—NPR NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Vogue • NPR • The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • The Globe & Mail • Fortune • Bloomberg • New York Post • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • LibraryReads • PopMatters On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments. The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.

Author : Elizabeth Kilcoyne
Publisher : Wednesday Books
Page : 235 pages
File Size : 31,63 MB
Release : 2022-07-12
Category : Young Adult Fiction
ISBN : 1250790832

GET BOOK

"YA horror has found a new standard-bearer." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Dark, gripping, and gorgeous, Wake the Bones will lead you into the woods and keep you up late. As lush and sweltering as a Kentucky summer... Elizabeth Kilcoyne is a force.” - Gwenda Bond, New York Times bestselling author The sleepy little farm that Laurel Early grew up on has awakened. The woods are shifting, the soil is dead under her hands, and her bone pile just stood up and walked away. After dropping out of college, all she wanted was to resume her life as a tobacco hand and taxidermist and try not to think about the boy she can’t help but love. Instead, a devil from her past has returned to court her, as he did her late mother years earlier. Now, Laurel must unravel her mother’s terrifying legacy and tap into her own innate magic before her future and the fate of everyone she loves is doomed. Elizabeth Kilcoyne’s Wake the Bones is a dark, atmospheric debut about the complicated feelings that arise when the place you call home becomes hostile. "Seething with shadows, summer, and uniquely southern magic, Wake the Bones is a powerful debut that captures the ache of home being a place you simultaneously love and loathe." - Hannah Whitten, New York Times bestselling author of For the Wolf

Author : Marisha Pessl
Publisher : Scholastic UK
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 25,5 MB
Release : 2018-06-07
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : 1407188038

GET BOOK

A compulsive, read-in-one-sitting suspense novel: page-turning, perfectly paced with a trust-no-one cast of characters and a high stakes death-cheating dilemma. Five friends. Only one can survive the Neverworld Wake. Who would you choose?

Author : John Dickson Carr
Publisher : Hachette UK
Page : 245 pages
File Size : 15,31 MB
Release : 2012-11-19
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1471905187

GET BOOK

Christopher Kent, worth a quarter of a million pounds yet without a penny in his pocket, stands hungrily in Piccadilly one snowy morning, looking up at the huge hotel, when a piece of card bearing a number floats down to him. He enters and is served with breakfast, giving the waiter the room number. Then an unlucky chance compels him to go up to room 707. Inside a woman lies murdered in a trunk. Kent needs to prove his innocence fast, and calls in Dr Gideon Fell to investigate - but there's been another murder, and Dr Fell must figure out what connects them in order to find the guilty party.

Author : Johann Ludwig Tieck
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 42,84 MB
Release : 2024-05-17
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781835528181

GET BOOK

"Wake Not the Dead" by Johann Ludwig Tieck is a chilling and atmospheric tale that delves into themes of obsession, ambition, and the boundaries between life and death. Set against the backdrop of a crumbling castle in the German countryside, Tieck's novella follows the ill-fated experiments of the alchemist Victor Fritz, who becomes consumed by the desire to defy the natural order and bring the dead back to life. At its core, "Wake Not the Dead" is a cautionary tale of hubris and moral decay, as Victor's reckless pursuit of forbidden knowledge leads to tragic consequences for himself and those around him. Through Tieck's vivid prose and eerie imagery, readers are drawn into a world of Gothic horror and macabre fascination, where the boundaries between the living and the dead blur and the darkest impulses of the human psyche are laid bare. As Victor delves deeper into the mysteries of life and death, he becomes increasingly isolated from society and consumed by his own hubris, ultimately leading to his downfall. Through his tragic journey, Tieck explores timeless themes of guilt, redemption, and the consequences of playing God, offering readers a haunting meditation on the dangers of unchecked ambition and the fragility of the human soul. More than just a Gothic thriller, "Wake Not the Dead" is a thought-provoking exploration of the darker aspects of human nature and the consequences of tampering with forces beyond our control. As readers immerse themselves in Tieck's atmospheric narrative, they are reminded of the timeless allure of the supernatural and the enduring power of literature to provoke fear, fascination, and reflection.