Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy

by Diana Preston
Category: "World History - Military"
Pages:457
Year of Publication:2002
Date Added:01/24/2004
Date Read:01/24/2004
Notes:On May 7, 1915, toward the end of her 101st crossing, from New York to Liverpool, R.M.S. Lusitania — pride of the Cunard Line — became the target of a terrifying new weapon and a casualty of a terrible new kind of war. With a historian's insight and a novelist's gift for characterization and detail, Preston re-creates the events surrounding the Lusitania's last voyage, from the behind-the-scenes politics in each country and the German spy ring in New York, to the extraordinary scene as the ship sank and the survivors awaited rescue, to the controversial inquests in Britain and the United States into how the ship came to be hit and why she sank so quickly.
My Rating: 8

Reviews for Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy

Review - Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy

Lusitania is a good book. It covers all aspects of the events surrounding the sinking of the liner, concentrating on the people involved rather than on the technical aspects.

Preston tells the story of several of the passengers, giving brief biographies in a chapter on the boarding of the ship in New York. She continues their stories during the sinking and then, for those who survived, after the rescue. But there were so many that I found it impossible to keep track of who was who. For the most part, this didn’t matter. When it did, I referred to the index.

The actual sinking takes place about halfway through the book and things drag a bit after that. Preston seems to go off-track a bit when she discusses German espionage in the United States. Her reason for doing this becomes clear in her closing notes — she gained access to some papers that weren’t available previously. Of course, she had to include these in the story, whether they fit or not.

A short appendix gives the technical aspects of why the ship sank the way it did and as quickly as it did. It also gives a convincing argument to account for the second explosion.

Preston’s writing style is easy to follow, but I find it a bit flat. In other words, while the book was educational and entertaining, I remained an observer. I never became a participant in spite of the fact that the sinking was directly responsible for my existence. I gave it an 8.
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