An intriguing, entirely engrossing investigation into a legendary disaster. Compared to Greg King and Penny Wilson’s...
Larson (In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, 2011, etc.) once again demonstrates his expert researching skills and writing abilities, this time shedding light on nagging questions about the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915.
“Lucy,” as she was fondly known, was one of the “greyhounds,” ships that vied for the Blue Riband award for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. A gem of the Cunard fleet, she drew the cream of society, and life aboard was the epitome of Edwardian luxury. The author works with a broad scope, examining the shipping business, wartime policies, the government leaders and even U-boat construction. More fascinating is his explanation of the intricacy of sailing, submerging and maneuvering a U-boat. Gaining position to fire a torpedo that has only a 60 percent chance of exploding belies the number of ships sunk. Throughout the voyage, many omens predicted disaster, especially the publication of a German warning the morning of sailing. The British Admiralty had broken the German codes and could track the whereabouts of submarines, particularly the deadly U-20. They knew that six U-boats left base during the last week of April, and three ships sank in the same channel the week before the Lusitania. The admiralty had decided to open a safer northern channel to merchant shipping but hadn’t directed the Lusitania to use it. Larson explores curiosities and a long list of what ifs: If the Lusitania had not been late in sailing, if the fog had persisted longer, if the captain hadn’t turned to starboard into the sub’s path and if that one torpedo hadn’t hit just in the right spot, the Lusitania might have arrived safely.
An intriguing, entirely engrossing investigation into a legendary disaster. Compared to Greg King and Penny Wilson’s Lusitania (2014), also publishing to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the sinking, Larson’s is the superior account.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-307-40886-0
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author of National Book Critics Circle Awardwinning The Queen's Throat (1993) embarks on another self-indulgent adventure in cultural criticism. Koestenbaum takes for his subject ``the allure of icon Jackie,'' as opposed to the actual Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. In lieu of an organizing thesis, he presents highly subjective flights of interpretive fancy about the images and themes that identify Jackie's ``iconicity.'' In 40 short, impressively opaque chapters, the author spins out free-associative essays about ``Jackie's Hairdos,'' ``Jackie and Ordinary Objects,'' and ``Jackie versus Maria Callas'' (the table of contents is the most enjoyable portion of the book). His vision of icon Jackie is assembled from public artifacts, mainly tabloid and movie-magazine headlines, paparazzi and news photographs, and stray gossip, as well as the detritus of his own imagination, which finds Jackie metaphorically lurking in such unlikely places as Elizabeth Taylor's portrayal of Cleopatra. ``Symbolically,'' he ventures elsewhere, ``she wore sunglasses because she'd been wounded by JFK's assassination: she'd seen the sun implode, and, blinded, traumatized, could never again face light. Maybe she had no eyes!'' Koestenbaum seems to take rapturous, solitary delight in his own cleverness. The impulse to read the book as parody or as campy fluff is thwarted by its obsessive tone and by the profligate use of pseudo-critical language: ``Her unreality was touching, poignant; because we felt sorry for simulacral Jackie, isolated from experience and sensation, her unreality became the badge of her pathetic authenticity.'' Whether rhapsodizing about the size of Jackie's head or sharing the reasons Jackie reminds him of Chiclets, Koestenbaum makes connections so personal that they provoke nothing more than wonder that an associate professor at Yale has so much time on his hands. (photos, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-374-28446-6
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
The accessible, sometimes resonant final chapter in a postwar trilogy of memoirs. Ehrhart's (Passing Time, not reviewed) subject is the contradictions of justice. In 1974, during the last days of Richard Nixon's tainted presidency, the author was ``busted'' several times for far lesser crimes than the president was accused of. The book opens with Ehrhart bounced off his merchant marine ship for possession of marijuana. This first scene introduces a recurrent device: visits from his dead combat buddies, a kind of Greek chorus on American hypocrisy. Sometimes this nonfictional magical realism seems heavy-handed; at other times it works better. As Ehrhart's narrative proceeds, he reflects on the evils in Vietnam, his postwar embrace of the antiwar movement, and his conflict with his straitlaced Pennsylvania parents. His writing canters along, fueled by dialogue, with occasional arresting images: ``The war I wanted to leave behind was stuck in my throat like a stick sharpened at both ends.'' He recounts a bust by New York City cops suspecting him of armed robbery as well as one by New Jersey police looking for Puerto Rican terrorists, but the book's spine is a series of hearings before the Coast Guard on the drug charges. Ehrhart means to comment on the ironies of legal and procedural technicalities— he eventually went free, though he had broken the law—but he excerpts too much trial transcript for such a brief book. Nixon was pardoned, Ehrhart notes. ``At least I had faced my accusers. I had never lied about what I had done or why.'' At the end of the book, his Greek chorus suggests that American power brokers are going to lie about Vietnam, ``turn the whole thing upside down and inside out,'' and urges Ehrhart to tell the truth. This has its illuminating moments, but for those familiar with Vietnam literature, there's not much new or arresting.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-87023-955-4
Page Count: 176
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
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