Process of schooling and achievement and the fact that in our 21inch century world the achievement ladder gets narrower and narrower at the top. Theres so much inequality so much space between the one percent and the 001 percent it freaks parents out into acting ill logically and in terrible competitive ways. That what i strived to washing on as a parent to say where am i not making space for my kid to develop socially and emotionally and make her happy and the calmest she can be so her home is a refuge, and loving books and loving ideas and indulging her natural curiosity is part of it and so is opting out of the madness attached to what looks like a really greet goal, getting the best possible education for your kids. But well see. Shes only throw. Shes only three. One more question. Thanks. Every weekend booktv offers programming focused on nonfiction authors and books. Keep watching for more here on cspan2 and watch any of our past programs online a booktv. Org. Eric larson is next. He talks be in sinking of the lusitania, british oceanliner by a german uboat in 1915 and the influence of the vent on to americas entry into world war i. [applause] you cant believe how excited people are so see you. Im not kidding. They came for you. No other author could have done this. Tell that to my daughters. Theyre not impressed with you . I want to talk about a little bit about this idea of why we are so intrigued by the idea of the doomed ship, and heres my theory and you tell me whether this fits what youre thinking. Is it something about the adventure and the optimism of the voyage, colliding with this tragedy that the passengers dont know that theyre sailing into . Its like the collision of those ideas . No. Come on. No. I actually often wonder about that myself. The thing that drew me to the lusitania was the fact i have this maritime thing. I think we all doom the titanic and when i was a kid the flying dutchman occupied much of my imagination. But i think its something i think what happens is theres this something about the idea of being way out in the middle of the ocean and have something bad happen to you with no help available. That what taps into my my brain. Isolation of it . The isolation and also the romance. The glamor of a crossing and then suddenly interrupted by some catastrophe. Partly also because of my scan scan navan roots. My roots extend to minnesota and south dakota. You have won them over. You had them at scandinavian. There are probably 300erik larsons. I dont know how my forebears wound it land locked but were a seafaring people, before coming to sioux falls we were pillage from the sea. You were that guy. That guy. Okay. Im sure you know something about the wreck of the edmund fitzgerald. I think this kind of defies your theory because there was nothing that all that glam morous. A ship on its something we observe and talk about every year. Dont find that particularly romantic. You dont. No. I find that sinking really an amazing event. Why . On the great lakes and from what i understand, meteorologically the great lakes are a terrible place to be in a win storm because the waves are something you only experience on the ocean. Thats the fascinating part of the edmund fitzgerald. My dark fantasies tend toward the deep sea. Speaking of the deep sea im sure that when you were researching this you were studying the underwater photos and video of the lusitania wreck. Not really. Why . Im sorry. I dont mean to be difficult. Thank you eric, thats how its going to go tonight. Really, let me elaborate on that. I did rather late in the process take look at undersea photography that Robert Ballard had done. Heres the thing. Didnt want that to color my impression during the course of my research of what this voyage was like. I didnt want it to be this rusting hulk on the floor of the ocean, which is what it is now. I wanted in my mind this great glamorous ship with all these great glamorous spaces and the people walking aboard and so forth. So thats why i feel that way. That makes sense. Its lying in more than 300 feet of water. Right . On its starboard side. On the side, yep. And i dont want to jump too far ahead here but it sanks very very quickly. Do you know why its lying in the position that it is . Well, i actually dont. I cant tell you for sure whether its on the starboard or port side, and im not sure in the end that had much to do with exactly how it sank. When it sank. What i do know is when it sank, for much of that time it was only 18 minutes incredible. For much of that time it was at a 25degree list. So it may be their oregon the starboard side but just before it went under it sort of uprighted itself and plunged underneath. But it is on its side. How does that 18minute sinking compare . How unusual is that . Well, i mean, its incredibly unusual. The thing about the titanic it was a rather leisurely sinking but on odd way to i am not making light of the sinking of the titanic. I alaska saying that it was relatively speaking a leisurely rate of sinking. As you know the big issue with the titanic was that there were not enough life boats. Now the issue with the lusitania was that there were more than muff life boats. There will 20 not to bother you but there were 22 classa life boats think boats you think of when you think of life boats. Then they had a lot of collapsable boats stored underneath and thats how they made up the difference. The problem with the lusitania was the net result was almost the same because have to the boats were unusable because the list. The boats or oport side swung into the super struck tier. Those on the starboard side were suddenly out eight feet from the hull. So if you can imagine getting into a boat, youre already 60 feet above the sea and now you got to cross this eightfoot span and were using deck chairs as lad efforts. One of my favorite vignettes is a little boy takes a running leap and jumps into the life boat. But anyway, that was the problem with the lusitania. And then just the fact it sank so fast because out how it was struck. Since you mentioned the tie tap nick, titanic to note theres a connection between the captain of the lose tejano and the titanic die. Remember that right . No. Wasnt he being called to court to the connection is yeah. I thought you were speaking to him being a captain. There is a very interesting connect with the titanic. On the day before literally the day before departure may 1 1915 captain turner was called to give testimony in a big titanic legal proceeding, limitation of liability proceeding in new york, White Star Line was trying to limit its exposure to the various lawsuits after the sinking and turner was called as an Expert Witness to testify as to the behavior of the titanic and the titanics captain and why he was going so fast through ice and turner did not approve. Captain turner knew that there were risks to this crossing, that he was about to undertake and a lot of the passengers knew that too. Well, captain turner i dont im not quite sure i agree with that. Surprise first, lets see what the passengers what were talking about here is that on may 1 a very interesting thing happened in new york. In the new york newspapers that morning in the shipping news pages which were widely read, the German Embassy placed an advertisement or actually a notice lets say warning anybody who was traveling on a passenger liner or on any kind of merchant ship, that when they entered the waters around the unite kingdom the socalled war zone that germany declared in february, this notice was essentially reiterating this war zone existed if you sailed on a ship into this waters you sailed at your own risk. This ad did not name the lusitania. But it was widely interpreted to be aimed at the lusitania in part because like in the new york world one of these notices appear right next to the ad for kunnards lose lusitania. So there was that warning in the paper. And men people read it, some actually did not and only found out about the warning after the ship was a few hours out which is a wonderful time to find out that but captain turner we know he knew about the warning. But i dont think captain turner was at all saved by it. I dont think cavity turner was a sailor of the old school, came up through the great sailing ships a staunch guy the kind of guy when you get on ann airliner maybe i hate to fly im a panicky flier so i look for cues as to what is going to happen elm listen to the pilots voice. Anybody else do that . I listen for the very cool and calm blah, blah, blah. If i heard woody allen come over what would you do about. Be off that plane in heartbeat. But turner was the kind of guy if you can picture him he was the kind of guy if you ran into him on the deck, youd say this the kind of guy id want. He was not fazed by to the potential of submarine attack. I think he firmly believed his ship was faster and bigger than anything that any german submarine could tackle. Thats something that is interesting too here you. Describe how few people really understood how dangerous the german submarine was. Right. I have a note here, but you note the author or Sherlock Holmes actually got it. Right. One of the fascinating elements. The thing i agreed with you see . [laughter] its going to be good from here on in. So, the thing is, whenever you write when i write history, the way i like to write it one their important thing is to try to put yourself in the point of view of the era. And one thing that was very important to grasp for me was how new the submarine was in that time. We are all very familiar with it run silent run deep, ping, ping ping. There was no sonar in world war i and no depth charges until well after the lusitania. But the submarine was actually brand new and was not understood by anybody as to whether it would ever be a viable weapon and a couple of guys, though, got it. One was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who before the war wrote a prescient short story about a imaginary country that had handful of sub marines and nonetheless managed to bring the british emfire its knees. And that was his story which ran some he wrote it long before the war but was published the mock the month before the war. The other guy was Jackie Fisher. The admiralty hierarchy in britain there was the first lord of thed admiralty winston churchill, and then the number two the chief operating officer over the admiralty Jackie Fisher the first sea lord. And he got it, too. He understood, too. He understood that there were certain characteristics of the design of a submarine that virtually required that it be used a certain way. And churchill completely dismissed that. He didnt accept the idea that a submarine would ever be used against civilian shipping. Just too outrageous to contemplate. One thing you note is the autonomy that the submarines had once they were at sea and you say once a see a uboat captain was free to conduct his patrol in char manner suited him without supervision from above. What did that really translate to . What did that mean . Well, frankly was extremely high risk for germany that a mistake would be made and the elephant in the room, america would climb into the war with guns blazing. It went that when you were the captain of a submarine typically you were young men late 20s early 30s a crew of about 36, once you got out of range of german transmitters you were literally on your own. You could make any decisions you wanted. If you saw a worthy target you didnt have to call back to headquarters. You just went for it. And so the autonomy was both thrilling for these guys and also a huge, huge responsibility. And i wonder how important it is to understand how captain zweiger how it is to understand how he interpret that autonomy. Zweiger took it and ran with it. One of the big submarine aces in the war. He was a very talented hunter of ships using his submarine. He was however i went into this thinking knew there would be this collision course thing between the submarine and the lusitania, because the captain of the ship the captain of the submarine as did all submarine captains, kept a meticulous war log detailing everything that happened from moment he left germany to the time he return. So i knew all of that. And it made enough an obvious narrative thing to have the lusitania and submarine converging. In the course of researching this came across all this interesting information about zweiger elm wanted him to be this classic villain. I wanted him i would love a mon mon monacle and a scar. I got this nice guy. Handsome, beloved by the crew, wellliked in the service and one of his friend, fellow submarine commander said he couldnt hurt a flow. This is after the war. So just ive opened the book to this room 40 cadence and this is is this the positioning the report on the positioning. One of the remarkable things about the story as i started getting into reading i got to say i came to the lusitania reluctantly. I had nothing else on my plate. But i had this maritime tick, and i was just interested in the lusitania, and i dont know. I started reading about and it started getting more and then did my first exploratory archival trip and that cemented it. But one of the things that surprised me was the role of this super secret operation within thed a admiralty called room 40. It was established early in the war to take advantage of the nearly miraculous events that occurred, which was on three different occasions again very early in the war the british came intos of germanys into possession of germanys three main code bucs, governing most all of their wire transmissions, naval and diplomatic so churchill and handful of others got together and formed room 40, which was to take advantage of these captured code books and use them to read wireless messages intercepted from the german navy, and they became very, very adept that this and one of the mysteries not mystery one of the most interesting things about the saga is ewe20, the submarine, sent wireless messages and received wireless messages. So from the very beginning room 40 knew exactly what the submarines orders were, knew exactly where it was supposed to end up on patrol, and during its first 24 hours at sea the wireless operator sent 14 position reports which the british in room 40 duly intercepted and decoded. Theyll knew exactly where the submarine was for the first 24 hours. Thats the chapter youre looking at. In the book its at 2 00 a. M. , the exact location. 4 00 a. M. , 6 00 a. M. 8 00 a. M. , and then you say the reports cease. Where was all this information for you to fine it . All in the intercept in the Archives National archive owes the unite kingdom, vast caches of information. All the decoded intercepts. All there in their files. Just really tremendous stuff. And the thing about about german submarine commanders, they were said to be quote unquo girlous they liked using their wireless. They liked chatting over they liked chat over the wireless. I have to think that part of it might be because they knew that ultimately they were going to be dealing with this amazing loneliness and it was comforting to be able to but they had no clue that somebody was listening. They had no idea. Not only they had no idea then, they had no idea through most of the war. The german navy was so arrogant so believe their codes would never be broken. How hard was the code to break . What kind of information did you well, once you have the code book yes. But there are two elements to this. Theres a code book, which is key, and that consisted of three letter groups, including a threeletter group for nantucket. Which sort of suggested certain aspirations on the part of the german navy. But the when the germans puts their messages in coercion they used the code book primarily at the first step and then would further scramble it using a cipher. So there was a lot of codebreaking that would that to go not codebreaking but deciphering. Theres a difference in crypto graphic circles. But it was relatively easy to break that cipher because of how regimented the german navy was in communications with its ships. I dont want to bore anybody with the details of this, but essentially if you signal the same light ship every night at 6 00 p. M. , youre going to everbally catch on this is the light ship and its 6 00 p. M. And this message and you know what its saying. So through the process they could become very adept not only at deciphering but using the code book to break the code. I had someone in the audience earlier before we started ask me about how you discovered the level of detail, even about what the passengers of the lusitania were wearing the flower that somebody wore in their pocket or Something Like that. Where is all that information to be found . I hate to say it but all that detail is in the very detailed cataloguing of personal effects found on the dead afterwards. And who did all that cataloguing . Mostly the british navy, people in queenstown, ireland some kunnard. Kunnard put out a confidential book after the sinking which contained just every name every body every list of personal effects, they reason they did this because they hoped that from all these unidentified bodies something might trigger somebodys recollection and say maybe that aunt maude that kind of thing. Thats where all those things came from. Youre listening to author erik larson at the fitzgerald theater. His new book i called dead wake the Last Crossing of the lusitania its a thread event and you can follow the thread at the thread npr on twitter. So lets place these two adversaries, the lusitania and the uboat on the collision course. The lusitania has been at sea for circumstance days . Lusitania set sail set out on may 1 and the torpedoing occurred on may 7. The submarine set out on april 30. What happened on the voyage of the lusitania leading up to that . Flirting. A lot of shuffleboard. They actually did play shuffleboard. The voyage, until this, may 6th was really pretty much uneventful and actually was probably getting fairly tedious. I dont know how many people have been on transatlantic voyages, actually for the vive my wife and i did. You did. We did a voyage on then queen mary ii, an amazing ship, and we set out in november after thanksgiving fairly midway through the research, did the crossing. No sooner did we leave new york harbor than were in a force 10 gale but that spoke to me and my scandinavian heart. And in enact queen mary ii is a very stable ship, even in incredibly foul weather. One thing that really came home to me on this voyage is that after you leave the harbor, it gets boring really fast. This was not a cruise, this was a voyage. Whats the difference . Hes very proud of the fact that the Queen Mary Mary two is a pointtopoint vessel. It does not stop in the Caribbean Place to place but its a really its really this amazing ship. It was built to deal with everything the atlantic has two offer but the thing is when youre out in the middle of the ocean there really is that feeling even today. You were way out there and give a cat every day you can plot and see where you are on