Thunderstruck by Erik Larson

Erik Larson is known for his bestselling book "The Devil in the White City"
about the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago and the serial killer who
prowled its streets. Like that book, "Thunderstruck" also mingles a history-
changing event - Marconi's invention of wireless telegraphy, with an infamously
gruesome murder in London. He magically links the forward march of technology
with the nail-biting capture of that criminal at sea because the ship Montrose
used telegraph technology to communicate with the police in England.

While our proximity to Chicago makes the other book more interesting to me
personally, I am constantly spellbound by how this author makes the connections
that he does. The writing is very clear and readable, despite the scientific or
medical matters with which Larson sometimes deals. And the portraits he draws
of the Italian inventor Marconi and the American murderer Hawley Crippen are
complete and brilliant. Dr. Crippen is drawn by Larson as a mild-mannered man
who gave all he could to an abusive wife, before he could finally endure no more
and killed her. Marconi should be a heroic figure, but Larson draws him as a cold,
manipulative aristocrat who loved his invention more than his wives or children,
and certainly devoted more time to it's success.

Larson makes interesting the race for financial success that came with
Marconi's invention, bringing humanity to Marconi's striving fellow scientists, as
well as to charlatans who tried to link the "magic" of wireless communication with
communicating with the dead, which was so popular at the time. Larson makes
us sympathize with everyone - those who tried to help Marconi's invention
succeed, and those who felt his invention had stolen their own thunder. Larson
also has the gift of making us sympathize with the murderer Crippen much more
than his greedy, volatile wife, as well as with the meek little secretary who would
steal the doctor's heart and inevitably become a party to the wife's murder.

I thrilled with the readers of the time as Scotland Yard detectives sped across the
ocean to capture Crippen during his escape attempt, while Crippen himself,
aboard another ship, remained in blissful ignorance that the jig was up. The
situation is nearly impossible to imagine in this day and age where it is hard to
escape even the most mundane news thanks to computers and cell phones. The
capture happens, the villian is condemned to die, and through it all, the world
becomes aware of the power of Marconi's telegraph. Was it my favorite book
ever? No, not in the least. But I do not regret having read it, if only for it's
increasing my understanding of Marconi and the Crippen murder.

Submitted by Gerti