Books

Thunderstruck

  • Jan 22, 2021
  • Erik Larson
  • 687 responses.

Thunderstruck The interwoven stories of two men whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time Hawley Crippen a very unlikely murderer and Guglielmo Marconi the obsessive creator of

  • Title: Thunderstruck
  • Author: Erik Larson
  • ISBN: 9781400080663
  • Page: 124
  • Format: Hardcover

    • The interwoven stories of two men whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication.A true story of love, murder, and the end of the world s great hush In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stoThe interwoven stories of two men whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication.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 crime With his superb narrative skills, Erik Larson guides these parallel narratives toward a relentlessly suspenseful meeting on the waters of the North Atlantic Along the way, he tells of a sad and trag

    • ✓ Thunderstruck ☆ Erik Larson
      124 Erik Larson
    Thunderstruck

    About "Erik Larson"

    1. Erik Larson

      Erik Larson, author of the international bestseller Isaac s Storm, was nominated for a National Book Award for The Devil in the White City, which also won an Edgar Award for fact crime writing His latest book, In the Garden of Beasts Love Terror and an American Family in Hitler s Berlin, has been acquired for publication in 20 countries and optioned by Tom Hanks for a feature film Erik is a former features writer for The Wall Street Journal and Time His magazine stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper s and other publications.Larson has taught non fiction writing at San Francisco State, the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, and the University of Oregon, and has spoken to audiences from coast to coast He lives in Seattle with his wife, who is the director of neonatology at the University of Washington Medical Center and at Children s Hospital of Seattle, and the author of the nonfiction memoir, Almost Home, which, as Erik puts it, could make a stone cry They have three daughters in far flung locations.

    687 Comments

    1. First off, while this is an interesting and engaging story, it is not the top notch book that Devil in the White City was Here, Larson tells parallel tales of Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the wireless, and Hawley Crippen, a relative nobody who gained infamy by doing away with his wife Where they intersect is when the new fangled wireless machine is used to track the fleeing killer and his mistress as they cross the Atlantic in a passenger liner Larson is excellent at imparting a sense of a tim [...]

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    2. Onvan Thunderstruck Nevisande Erik Larson ISBN 1400080665 ISBN13 9781400080663 Dar 463 Safhe Saal e Chap 2006

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    3. I enjoyed parts of Thunderstruck and really had to force myself through others The chapters about Marconi were often boring and too technical for my non scientific mind Larson sort of expects his reader to already understand certain elements of how radio waves works, which I don t However, when Larson wasn t droning on about building towers and antennae, Marconi s story still captured my attention I m sure scientific minded people would enjoy the aspects that I didn t In the end, I ended up qui [...]

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    4. In classic Erik Larson style, Thunderstruck is told through parallel lives and events In this case, so than in The Devil in the White City, it s not immediately evident how the elements will come to intertwine.Guglielmo Marconi below was smart, contributed to society in the end, blah, blah, blah, but he was also kind of a jerk that s my opinion, not expressly stated in the book Larson chalks it up to a lack of social skills, which may be true, but it doesn t mean I have to forgive him for it.It [...]

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    5. The Author s Note says that the murder case in this book so captivated Alfred Hitchcock that he worked elements of it into Rear Window and The Rope Rear Window is probably my favorite movie of all time, so I had to find out which elements he was referring to This is why I wanted to read this book and have had a copy for a couple of years now.Larson incorporates via alternating chapters the story of Marconi s creation of the telegraph, and therein lies my excuse for NOT wanting to read this book [...]

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    6. There s a certain style of storytelling which I have an affinity for, both in terms of telling stories myself and listening to them or reading them The style, in a word, would be called digressive I know this style doesn t work for everyone, but it works for me I like talking about or hearing about the little things that don t necessarily advance the plot or aren t crucial to understanding the point of something As long as the digressions are interesting in and of themselves, I think they have a [...]

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    7. Thunderstruck, by Erik Larson is a non fiction account of the infamous murder of Belle El by her husband, Hawley Crippen, and the story of Guglielmo Marconi,the inventor of wireless telegraphy The story of both men was riveting Marconi was obsessive about his work, probably had Aspergers syndrome He battles it out with competitors over patents and rights It was like a soap opera sometimes, all the accusations, and back biting The details behind the invention was also very interesting This man de [...]

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    8. This one turned out to be a bit of a disappointment for me I loved The Devil in the White City Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America and was expecting something similar here Unfortunately, I was so weighed down in details of Marconi and his electrical engineering project, I could barely keep my head above water There was simply too much detail when describing Marconi s work towards engineering wireless Although an electrical engineer or any person interested in early commun [...]

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    9. This is a book about the invention of wireless telegraphy As if he knew this wasn t the sexiest of topics, author Erik Larson includes a murder mystery alongside it, creating a fun little two for the price of one non fiction treat He lures you in with relationship drama and then works in the science So sneaky And once the two distinct stories come together, so delicious.I can see how some readers would be less than enthused about the technical details of Marconi s science experiments, but I liv [...]

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    10. Where I got the book purchased from my local indie bookstore at an author event Signed with a funny drawing Like The Devil in the White City, Thunderstruck tells two stories that have a meeting point In this case, it s the at the time notorious case of Dr Crippen, who murdered his wife, embraced by the larger story of the development of the wireless telegraph It was wireless that enabled the British police to catch Crippen and his lover Ethel Le Neve, who were on a ship bound for Canada Crippen [...]

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    11. Larson is rapidly becoming one of my favorite writers The Devil in the White City, Dead Wake, and now Thunderstruck, serve as prime examples of compelling narrative nonfiction.

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    12. In his typical style Erik Larson tells two parallel interwoven stories The first is the story of Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the wireless The second is the story of Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen, homeopathic doctor and one of the most notorious murderers in British history The link Dr Crippen was the first suspect to be captured with the aid of wireless telegraphy.I know that Marconi was a pioneer in wireless telegraphy In this book I learned a lot about the man From Larson s narrative it would ap [...]

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    13. This didn t move quickly only because I ve had a bit less time to read in the last week Although it isn t as compelling as either his The Devil in the White City Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America or Dead Wake The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, this is an interesting story From the beginning, we understand why Larson chose to tell these stories in the same volume The juxtaposition of an entirely new technology one unimaginable to most and that of the police tracking dow [...]

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    14. I am waffling between three and four stars on this book I haven t read Devil in the White City, but I did read Garden of Beasts, and it doesn t even quite stack up to that It took a very long time to get into The first half of the book wasn trandominformation per se, because it still centered around Marconi and Crippen, but it really had nothing to do with the story that would eventually unfold I suppose that we needed to know that Crippen had a younger, estranged son, that lived in California, [...]

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    15. Well, he s gone and done it again Another brilliant, engrossing true life novel, completely with two independent yet seamlessly interwoven story lines that he manages to treat equitably through and through.This book is a compelling journey of one man into the annals of scientific history Marconi and another into the depths of criminality Crippen The stories tie together in the end, during Crippen s capture.Neither story can be said to be particularly happy Both men were irredeemably flawed in ma [...]

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    16. After reading Devil in the White City one of my favorite books of all time , I was very excited to read this book I ended up disappointed I really had to force my way through this book There was too much about the invention and not enough about the murder Devil in the White City was much balanced Although maybe it just felt that way because the world s fair chapters were just as interesting as the serial killer chapters Erik Larson is a great writer I enjoy how he ties a famous event to a tale [...]

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    17. Erik Larson has done it again His new Thunderstruck is another of his works that ties together separate narratives into a compelling story His earlier Devil in the White City juxtaposes a serial murderer with the creation of the Chicago Columbian Exposition The result is powerful This book takes a similar tack, juxtaposing Guglielmo Marconi s obsession to master wireless communication with the gentle, quiet Hawley Crippen s murder of his wife The book begins by discussing the suspicions that Cap [...]

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    18. very interesting reads like fiction and compelling from page 1adding a little with his nonfiction as fiction style the author has a very distinctive voice in the book world and I read a lot from a few of his novels, though I fully finished only In the Garden of the Beasts until this one I expect that to change as the recent Lusitania book is also superb and I want to read the Chicago fair one before I go to the Milan Expo in Julythis one was perfect reading on the plane back from Italy as it fe [...]

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    19. With incredible deftness, Larson weaves together the stories of an Italian scientist and inventor and a British hack physician and hapless lover The setting is Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a time that saw Edwardian indulgences and a fascination with mysticism and magic dissolving before the advances in science, technology, and the inevitable march toward the first World War This book is a lesson in history, an examination of the business and politics of technology and invent [...]

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    20. I really enjoyed this book It s basically two stories that eventually come together in an interesting way Guglielmo Marconi is a young Italian man who becomes fascinated with wireless communication and through instincts, not scientific knowledge, creates a wireless transmitter that can span the Atlantic Ocean.Hawley Crippen is a doctor and seller of so called miracle potions whose home life is a shambles His wife, Belle is a failed aspiring opera singer, failed variety performer and spender of m [...]

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    21. Thunderstruck, written by Erik Larson, tells the story of two men Hawley Crippen, a hopeless romantic who falls in love with a woman that craves the thrill of trouble and Guglielmo Marconi, a scientist researching means of communication who strays away from normality and attempts methods pertaining to the supernatural This book is set in a seemingly large ship, the S.S Montrose in 1910, when great shipping companies competed to build the biggest, fastest ocean liners Racing against time, Marconi [...]

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    22. 3.5 Larson brings his talent for writing a page turning non fiction work to bear on the case of Dr H H Crippen, who was fleeing England with his mistress, after being questioned in the disappearance of his wife An escape that would have been easily made just 5 years previously was foiled by the relatively new advance of the Marconi wireless, with which Scotland Yard detectives could communicate with their counterparts in Canada and the U.S and with the ship s captain The result is that the fugit [...]

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    23. It s an axiom that Great Men and, one supposes, Great Women are Unpleasant People Larson s treatment of Guglielmo Marconi, great great great grandfather of the device you re reading this on, does nothing to dispel the miasma of meanness from him What a rotten human being How completely insensitive, how thoroughly obsessively devoted to his own self and comfort, what a complete rotter of a businessman Thank you, Guglielmo, for the gifts all that human wreckage you left behind have given us all Ro [...]

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    24. If you like history that reads like a thriller, then Thunderstruck should be on your list of books to read Much like in Devil in the White City, Larson is able to weave an amazing amount of historical fact and detail into this fascinating story of murder and intrigue from the turn of the century We take for granted today what was little understood and even less trusted as a viable means of communication then, in the form of radio transmission and communication Larsen masterfully places his story [...]

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    25. I love me some Erik Larson, but he is the literary nonfiction equivalent of Wes Anderson for me Thunderstruck The Life Aquatic The Devil in the White City The Royal Tenenbaums

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    26. It s not a biography per se and it s not a memoirbut I had to stick in as a pseudo something, since it reads like fictionwhich would have been a good thing if the writing had been better The premise of this book is fantastice trans atlantic telegraph is in its infancyuntested really when it s used to track a killer across the ocean Sounds cool, could be coolbut all I really wanted to do was read about Crippen THAT is the interesting story Marconi not so much I felt like the story got bogged dow [...]

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    27. This was definitely a struggle for me to get through But I don t like to leave things undone and I like to finish what I start, so I MADE myself finish this book, even though I wanted to shoot myself in the face while reading it The sections on wireless technology were so incredibly boring, but the parts about murder were interesting Like his last book I read, Devil in the White City, I was left wanting info story on the murderous parts Which makes me think either a I m a sadist, b murders and [...]

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    28. I hate the star system It occasionally forces me to rate books a notch lower than I would like to nonetheless, 2 stars It was OK I am typically caught up in this author s style, subjects, and can flip from one story to the next with ease This one misses that mark although the dual narrative account of a non fiction book are still weaved together to read like a novel than most subject focused books Do NOT let that deter you from reading either this book or anything else he has written the guy is [...]

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    29. Larson has a way with writing He smartly alternates individual stories and universal history We get to know Guglielmo Marconi, the man who invented the radio, and the hurdles he had to overcome in order to promote his technology, one of them being his own temper While competition in the new telecommunications industry gets tougher, the reader follows a criminal case the murder of a common, if well described, woman A true crime novel, a business strategy handbook, and a delightful piece of histor [...]

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    30. Not one of my favorites by this author but I do admit to having really very little interest in the Marconi part of the story His part of the story was too technical for most of the time, it just did not interest me at all Crippen s side of the story was definitely interesting and probably would have been so had I not read Crippen this year as well.

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