Erik Larson

On May 1, 1915, with World War I entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers surprisingly were at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. The Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "greyhounds" and the captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures...