If I were to compile a list of my ten favorite non-business works of non-fiction, four of then were written by Erik Larson:

o Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History (1999)

o The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America (2003)

o In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin (2011)

o Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (2015)

Is Larson’s latest his best? In my opinion, no…but none of the others is better.

Why is he so special?

I stopped listing the reasons at #27 and now suggest only three:

1. He is a master of dramatizing historical material. In each of his narratives, real people are characters in a real setting at a specific time in history, engaged in conflicts and beset by threats, behaving as thorough research verifies. Otherwise dormant historical material seems to spring to life in narratives that have Snap! Crackle! and Pop!

2. The events portrayed have significant historical importance. This is a key point because, to his great credit as a storyteller, we already know much of what had happened (e.g. sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine) and yet become engrossed in the sequence of events. Ben Affleck achieves the same effect in Argo, especially when directing the last 15-20 minutes.

3. He is also a master of back-stories, providing — as does Homer in his epic poems as well as Henry James and James Joyce in their novels — a multi-dimensional perspective on the main action by framing it with at least a dozen subordinate but nonetheless significant, at times interdependent story sequences. In Dead Wake, for example, he juxtaposes significant details of life aboard the Lusitania with those aboard U-20. Those who have played 3D chess know exactly what I mean.

I envy anyone who has not as yet read any of Erik Larson’s non-fiction narratives.