Erik Larson

A portrait of the Edwardian era recounts two parallel stories--the case of Dr. Hawley Crippen, who murdered his wife and fled to America, and Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless communication--as the new technology is used to capture a killer.

Thunderstruck

Jason Porterfield

Wynn Netherland

Set in a world made smaller by technology–over one hundred years ago–Thunderstruck is a woven narrative of invention, ambition, competition, and murder. At the turn of the 20th century Guglielmo Marconi and contemporaries pursue the original wireless known as "wireless telegraphy." Meanwhile, a mild-mannered doctor of homeopathy pursues love abroad in London. Their lives are destined to converge thanks to Marconi's new invention. 

In one way, it's the story of the birth of our 24x7 news cycle.

Ben Nathan

I really enjoy Erik Larson's history writing. He clearly has a level of obsession with the end of the Victorian Era. The story of Marconi is a fascinating one, for sure. Crippen is also an enthralling tale. I think, just like Devil In The White City, that the broader history is much more interesting than the murder, but it makes for a nice way to tie the whole thing together.

Steph

'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 . . .

Thunderstruck

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