Tales of Comparison Multiplied Seven Fold

Tales of Comparison Multiplied Seven Fold
Courtesy Photo

Courtesy Photo

Erik Larson, the FPL Author Series guest for 2016, is scheduled at the Fayetteville Public Library on Friday, April 1, at 7 p.m. Larson is a New York Times bestselling author, the winner of the Edgar Award for Nonfiction, and a finalist for the National Book Award.

Larson’s a journalist turned narrative historian. Fiction author pilfering reports of true-crime. Writes of intersecting incidents and paradoxical real-life events. He explores murder most gruesome leap-frogging across technological innovations. Writes of lives parallel, yet not. History morphs into high drama.

Not easily defined, Larson doesn’t shy away from controversy. His latest endeavor Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania chronicles the Cunard vessel’s end. As the storm clouds of war rose across Europe and German U-boats plagued the shipping lanes between the Continent and the United States, the Lusitania set sail. When she sank in 1915, some 128 American souls went down and public opinion galvanized toward war. In April 1917 the U.S. entered World War I.

Larson writes with a fine pen bringing together politics, covert policy decisions, economics, and technology within the social and historical milieu preceding World War I. He challenges readers to see history through a multi-facet kaleidoscope.

A special pre-event Meet and Greet with Larson will be held prior to the public talk from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in the Reading Room. Tickets are $15 per person to the pre-event benefit and proceeds go to support future programming at the library. Attendees will have the chance to meet Larson and receive priority seating. To purchase tickets visit the library or the library’s website at faylib.org/larson.

The Erik Larson presentation is free and open to the public. Seating is first come, first served and doors will open at 6:30 p.m. A book signing follows the public lecture.


WORKS BY ERIK LARSON

Larson, Erik (1992). The Naked Consumer: How Our Private Lives Become Public Commodities – A look at how market researchers and giant databanks invade consumer privacy and compile information.

Larson, Erik (1994). Lethal Passage: How the Travels of a Single Handgun Expose the Roots of America’s Gun Crisis. Case studies in the causes and effects of our gun-happy society.

Larson, Erik (1999). Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History. Details the experiences of Isaac Cline and the Galveston Hurricane along with the murder of Rice University founder William Marsh Rice, Houston, Texas.

Larson, Erik (2003). The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America as serial killer Dr. H. H. Holmes stalks Chicago while the city undergoes a technological transformation.

Larson, Erik (2006). Thunderstruck: The congruence of Guglielmo Marconi’s invention of the wireless and notorious British murderer Hawley Harvey Crippen opens a window on the most public of criminal chases and the miracle of wireless communication.

Larson, Erik (2011). In The Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin — Saga of how William E. Dodd, the first American ambassador to Nazi Germany, and his daughter responded their posting as Hitler rose to power.

Categories: Commentary