Department of Book Reports Part 4

Department of Book Reports

Thunderstruck by Erik Larson (Crown $25.95)

I heard recently that the average American male reads one book a year. And that book will be non-fiction. Why this should be, I don’t know. Perhaps women are more apt to engage their imaginations while men want something more approaching certainty. Maybe women prefer escape and men like fact. Or maybe I’m full of crap. If Norman Mailer can hit number two on the New York Times Fiction bestseller list, I can guarantee that it’s not women driving those sales. And if Jeanette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle hits the non-fiction list, it’s not because men are buying it.

But I’m a uniter, not a divider. So this week I’m recommending Thunderstruck, a piece of social history that everyone will enjoy. Larson tells the interlocking stories of an American doctor and resident of London, Dr. Hawley Crippin; and Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless telegraphy. Their portraits are vividly drawn. Crippin was a milquetoast, quiet, shy, described as the “kindest of men”. Making an unfortunate marriage to a woman who was an aspiring singer, a social butterfly, shrewish to her husband, and who flaunted her relationships with other men, Crippin himself falls in love with another woman. Marconi was a driven man, enigmatic, prone to very grandiose ideas. He won the, then, new Nobel Prize in Physics without really understanding the science behind his invention.

Crippin murdered his wife, Belle. He represented to his girl friend that Belle had died of natural causes in the States. But Belle’s friends became suspicious, the police were asked to inquire, and Crippin panicked. In 1910, Crippin and the girl friend attempted to flee aboard an ocean liner, but unknown to them, were recognized by the ships captain. The Police Inspector boarded a faster ship to intercept the couple in Canada. The manhunt was followed by readers of the American and British newspapers as the wireless became the means for the story to be spread quickly. Marconi’s invention made the world smaller. And, even in 1910, the idea that sound and pictures could be transmitted in this manner were being developed.

Thunderstruck is also a picture of Edwardian times. It is a world nearing the disaster of World War One, the last gasp of dying monarchies. It is the world of English Music Halls, and the new art of cinema. It is the era of the great Ocean Liners, and the burgeoning field of aviation. Larson combines the insights of a good novelist with an ability to bring this world to life, much as he did the same in his previous book, The Devil in the White City, for Chicago’s World Exhibition in 1893.

Of course this book is available at Jackson Street Books and other fine independent bookstores.

This report was written without any help by democommie, nor did he provide any inspiration. The check bounced. Again.