Thunderstruck
  • Published: 1 August 2011
  • ISBN: 9781409044765
  • Imprint: Transworld Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 544

Thunderstruck

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The New YorkTimes bestselling story of the notorious murderer, Dr Crippen, whose life (and eventual death) were inexorably interwoven with that of Marconi and his miraculous invention: the wireless.

'A big, bold approach to the writing of narrative non-fiction . . . it shows how tiny lives may occasionally become caught up in the wonders of the age' GUARDIAN

In 1910, Edwardian England was scandalized by a murder.

Mild-mannered American Hawley Crippen had killed his wife, buried her remains in the cellar of their North London home and then gone on the run with his young mistress, his secretary Ethel Le Neve.

A Scotland Yard inspector, already famous for his part in the Ripper investigation, discovered the murder and launched an international hunt for Crippen that climaxed in a trans-Atlantic chase between two ocean liners.

The chase itself was novel, but what captured the imagination was the role played by a new and little understood technology: the wireless. Thanks to its inventor Marconi's obsessive fight to perfect his machine, the world was able to learn of events occurring in the middle of the Atlantic as they unfolded - something previously unthinkable.

It was the Crippen case that helped convince the world of the potential of Marconi's miracle technology, so accelerating the revolution that eventually produced the modern means of communication we take for granted today . . .
  • Published: 1 August 2011
  • ISBN: 9781409044765
  • Imprint: Transworld Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 544
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About the author

Erik Larson

Erik Larson is the author of The Devil in the White City, Thunderstruck, Isaac’s Storm, and other works of nonfiction. He has written for a variety of national magazines and is a former staff writer for The Wall Street Journal and Time. He lives in Seattle with his wife, three daughters, and an old British sports car named Mrs Peel.

Also by Erik Larson

The Devil In The White City
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Praise for Thunderstruck

A big, bold approach to the writing of narrative non-fiction...it shows how tiny lives may occasionally become caught up in the wonders of the age

Guardian

Shines a vivid electric light on the birth of the modern age...Larson is a great master of narrative

Mail on Sunday

Meticulously researched...a fascinating read

Daily Express

Larson has an exceptional mastery of historical detail and a real flair for suspense...carried off with effortless resonance

Observer

Compelling...Larson's research is meticulous and he presents a vivid picture of a world that was throwing off the shackles of Victorian restraint while barrelling downhill towards the horrors of the First World War

Birmingham Post

Larson has done it again...taken an unlikely historical subject and spun it into gold

New York Times

A vivid picture of a society: rich, assiduously detailed, with two strongly drawn characters at its centre

GOOD BOOK GUIDE

A fascinating study in which two disparate stories are cleverly dovetailed into a compelling whole

YORKSHIRE EVENING POST

Larson's gift for rendering an historical era with vibrant tactility and filling it with surprising personalities makes Thunderstruck an irresistible tale...he restores life to this fascinating, long-lost world.

WASHINGTON POST

Beautifully written...Thunderstruck triumphantly resurrects the spirit of another age, when one man's public genius linked the world, while another's private turmoil made him a symbol of the end of "the great hush" and the first victim of a new era when instant communication, now inescapable, conquered the world

PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY

Larson has a knack for creating genuine suspense in his writing, and his latest is thoroughly enthralling.

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