Thunderstruck
by Erik Larson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Erik LarsonEdition: Paperback
Published: 2007-09-25
ISBN: 1400080673
Number of pages: 480
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Book Reviews of Thunderstruck
Book Review: Too much literature
Summary: 3 Stars
It is interesting how much literary artifice underlies this book. The mere synchrony of the arrest of the murderer Dr. Crippin on shipboard facilitated by Marconi wireless becomes the rationale for a book which switches back and forth between the story of Dr. Crippin, his life, eventual deed, and arrest and some of the drama of Marconi's development of wireless communication. Because the author jumps around from date to date in order to achieve narrative effectiveness----one story as contrasted with the other but sometimes 1910 is juxtaposed with 1901---the reader is never sure of how things fit together. In truth, they don't. The claim that the world wide news coverage of Crippin' s flight and pursuit really established radio telegraphy in the face of doubts about its usefulness is a bit far fetched. The author does not do a very good job of explaining what the development of radio was all about. Because he leaves out most technical discussion, Marconi's unscientific Edison-like trying all possible combinations to see what works is left in an aura of mystery. The reader is presented with the drama of Marconi's ambition and business acumen but is given no sense of what is understood about radio, except that the waves were thought to be propagate in a straight line like light, so that one can't place Marconi's achievements and failures in the broader context of what is known about wireless and when it is discovered. In the epilogue the author does mention some of the scientists and what they learned but it is all too brief. It may be that Oliver Lodge's demonstration of radio waves in the 1880s is the real invention. But he never carried through and Marconi did.
So we have the literary artifice of a meek, hen-pecked doctor, his illicit love life and eventual murderous bid for romantic freedom compared to an insensitive scientifically ignorant entrepreneurial inventor and his crude interpersonal relationships. I guess it is literature, but so what. The book is much a description of the manners of Victorian-Edwardian England. As such it is only mildly interesting social history filled with gross generalizations about sexual morality, etc. I guess I don't read for entertainment. I much prefer more subtle history. After all it was also the England of Oscar Wilde. So there is much more to be said. That Marconi's wireless happened to entrap the poor doctor is little enough grounds to build a literary work on. But the author has done so and I suppose that I learned that I would like to know a lot more about the development of wireless, particularly the relationship between science and tinkering. To do so, I will have to resort to scholarly history of science and technology. Since I read the book, listening to it as a book on tape, my time was certainly better spent than feeling trapped in traffic and trying to escape in the beat of AM or FM radio. I won't be able to do that with a more scholarly description of the development of wireless.
Charlie Fisher, author of Dismantling Discontent: Buddha's Way Through Darwin's World
Summary of Thunderstruck
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 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. Thunderstruck presents a vibrant portrait of an era of s?ances, science, and fog, inhabited by inventors, magicians, and Scotland Yard detectives, all presided over by the amiable and fun-loving Edward VII as the world slid inevitably toward the first great war of the twentieth century. Gripping from the first page, and rich with fascinating detail about the time, the people, and the new inventions that connect and divide us, Thunderstruck is splendid narrative history from a master of the form.
From the Hardcover edition.
20th Century Books
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