Thunderstruck by Erik Larson is on the way

I just finished reading Thunderstruck  by Erik Larson. Larson also wrote The Devil in the White City, a longtime bestseller. I read Thunderstruck in an advance copy, it is being published October 24.

Thre are two interlocking stories here. The first is about Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of radio. You might think that the details of how this technology was popularized would be dull, but it never is. I was fascinated by the ways in which the world of 1900 differed from our own. Ships crossing the Atlantic were totally isolated from the human world for the duration of the trip unless they met another ship. But I believe that people are still the mass of contradictions and flaws that they are in this book, and that was fascinating for me too.

The second story is about Hawley Crippen, a meek American patent medicine doctor who lives in London with his brassy, overbearing wife. When his wife becomes increasingly troubled because of her lack of success in musical theater, and Hawley meets a young woman who becomes devoted to him, it is clear that trouble is on the way. I will not share all the details, but suffice it to say that Alfred Hitchcock had something to base his movie "Rear Window" on.

Eventually the two stories in this book become one.  If you love history, the story will take off for you and become hard to put down. I think it inevitable that this book will spend quite a while on the bestseller list too.