If you are part of the HPB Book Club, you are currently reading, or perhaps just finished, Dead Wake by Erik Larson, which is the first nonfiction book we have chosen.  I am a fiction girl. In my experience, nonfiction books have always read like the boring textbooks I had to read in school, full of dry facts with nothing to activate the imagination.  Dead Wake has changed my opinion of nonfiction forever and left me longing to read more by Erik Larson. If you interested in hearing about the Lusitania, listen to Erik’s interview with THINK.

Perhaps, Larson’s book intrigued me because of the way Larson presents his information. He considers himself an “animator of history” as opposed to an historian.  He wants his writing to “create pictures in the minds of his readers,” just like they do in fiction.

If you enjoyed Dead Wake, here are a few other books by Erik Larson for you to check out:

• In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin
• Thunderstruck
• The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
• Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
• Lethal Passage: How the Travels of a Single Handgun Expose the Roots of America’s Gun Crisis
• The Naked Consumer: How Our Private Lives Become Public Commodities

So, what Erik Larson book will you read next?  I already have The Devil in the White City waiting on my bedside table, ready to be read.

—

Julie is Traffic Manager at Half Price Books Corporate.
You may follow her on Twitter at @auntjewey.