Exploring the Lusitania: Probing the Mysteries of the Sinking That Changed History by Robert D. Ballard
Ever have a piece of grade A prime beef made into a passable hamburger? Yeah, that’s what this book was like. I wanted it to be fantastic. I have a morbid obsession with maritime tragedies, and the late 19th/early 20th century is my favorite period of history. So, a book that covers a subject that is so intrinsically interesting, yet doesn’t rivet me, is quite a disappointment. Blame Sebastian Junger and Edward O’Donnell for setting the bar too high.
The book is large, and contains many full-color photographs. That’s really the strength of this book, its lovely illustrations. I enjoyed seeing how people would travel across the Atlantic a century ago, and I even loved the ghoulish details, like the mass grave with the coffins in it.
The prose, however, didn’t grab me. I had a very hard time getting into it. The authors chose too many characters to follow, and I just couldn’t get attached to any of them. Also, many of the details seemed fabricated, or unrealistic. Since they interviewed at least some of the survivors for this (photographs of the survivors appear in the end) I imagine that my impression was wrong, and that these novelized accounts came from good authority, however, when I was reading it, it felt like a Reader’s Digest version, something written with an eye to maximum sensationalism.
The last section of the book deals with a crew’s efforts to explore the hull of the ship. This felt like listening to boys talk about their model cars–obviously fascinating to some, but completely uninteresting to me.
It’s an okay coffee table book, but it feels more like a companion to a television show than something that stands on its own.
