Best Selling Books by 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.

A cloth bag containing eight copies of the title and 1 discussion folder.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, a great confidence suffused America. Isaac Cline was one of the era's new men, a scientist who believed he knew all there was to know about the motion of clouds and the behavior of storms. The idea that a hurricane could damage the city of Galveston, Texas, where he was based, was to him preposterous, "an absurd delusion." It was 1900, a year when America felt bigger and stronger than ever before. Nothing in nature could hobble the gleaming city of Galveston, then a magical place that seemed destined to become the New York of the Gulf. That August, a strange, prolonged heat wave gripped the nation and killed scores of people in New York and Chicago. Odd things seemed to happen everywhere: A plague of crickets engulfed Waco. The Bering Glacier began to shrink. Rain fell on Galveston with greater intensity than anyone could remember. Far away, in Africa, immense thunderstorms blossomed over the city of Dakar, and great currents of wind converged. A wave of atmospheric turbulence slipped from the coast of western Africa. Most such waves faded quickly. This one did not. In Cuba, America's overconfidence was made all too obvious by the Weather Bureau's obsession with controlling hurricane forecasts, even though Cuba's indigenous weathermen had pioneered hurricane science. As the bureau's forecasters assured the nation that all was calm in the Caribbean, Cuba's own weathermen fretted about ominous signs in the sky. A curious stillness gripped Antigua. Only a few unlucky sea captains discovered that the storm had achieved an intensity no man alive had ever experienced. In Galveston, reassured by Cline's belief that no hurricane could seriously damage the city, there was celebration. Children played in the rising water. Hundreds of people gathered at the beach to marvel at the fantastically tall waves and gorgeous pink sky, until the surf began ripping the city's beloved beachfront apart. Within the next few hours Galveston would endure a hurricane that to this day remains the nation's deadliest natural disaster. In Galveston alone at least 6,000 people, possibly as many as 10,000, would lose their lives, a number far greater than the combined death toll of the Johnstown Flood and 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. And Isaac Cline would experience his own unbearable loss. Meticulously researched and vividly written, Isaac's Storm is based on Cline's own letters, telegrams, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the hows and whys of great storms. Ultimately, however, it is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets nature's last great uncontrollable force. As such, Isaac's Storm carries a warning for our time.

This devastating book illuminates America's gun culture -- its manufacturers, dealers, buffs, and propagandists -- but also offers concrete solutions to our national epidemic of death by firearm. It begins with an account of a crime that is by now almost commonplace: on December 16, 1988, sixteen-year-old Nicholas Elliot walked into his Virginia high school with a Cobray M-11/9 and several hundred rounds of ammunition tucked in his backpack. By day's end, he had killed one teacher and severely wounded another. In Lethal Passage Erik Larson shows us how a disturbed teenager was able to buy a weapon advertised as "the gun that made the eighties roar." The result is a book that can -- and should -- save lives, and that has already become an essential text in the gun-control debate. With a new afterword. "Touches on all aspects of the gun issue in this country. Gives great voice to that feeling...that something real must be done." --San Diego Union-Tribune "One of the most readable anti-gun treatises in years." --Washington Post Book World

An account of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 relates the stories of two men who shaped the history of the event--architect Daniel H. Burnham, who coordinated its construction, and serial killer Herman Mudgett.

Bleak Expectations -- The Rising Threat -- A Certain Eventuality -- Dread -- Blood and Dust -- The Americans -- Love Amid the Flames -- One Year to the Day -- Epilogue.

The best-selling author of Devil in the White City documents the efforts of first American ambassador to Hitler's Germany William E. Dodd to acclimate to a residence in an increasingly violent city where he is forced to associate with the Nazis while his daughter pursues a relationship with Gestapo chief Rudolf Diels.

Some companies gather and sell personal information to assist businesses in their marketing campaigns. It this American business at its finest, or simply a horrible invasion of our privacy? This shocking book will make readers think twice before writing their next check or going to the grocery store.

When a little cat is taken captive by a pair of robbers it sets in motion not just a grand rescue operation but also the beginning of lasting friendships and adventures on the high seas. Join Fall Landon Sully as his journey to fulfill his destiny is begun when he crosses paths with the mysterious Pirate with a Heart of Gold!

A descent into poetic, photo and story-based madness.

In 1910, Edwardian England was scandalized by a murder: a mild-mannered American named Hawley Crippen had killed his wife and buried her remains (well, some of her remains) in the cellar of their North London home. He then went 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 of the world's public was the role played by a new and little understood technology: the wireless, invented by Guglielmo Marconi. Thanks to Marconi's obsessive fight to perfect his invention, the world was able to learn of events occurring in the middle of the Atlantic as they unfolded - something previously unthinkable. Police, jurists, and editors of the time all agreed that if not for Marconi, Crippen would have escaped. But Marconi had struggled to gain acceptance for his invention as a practical technology (many viewed the wireless as a novelty or a supernatural device, while distrust of foreigners remained prevalent in England and America). It was the Crippen case that helped convince the world of the potential of Marconi's miracle technology, so accelerating the wireless revolution that eventually produced radio, television and cell phones. With a cast of colourful, captivating characters THUNDERSTRUCK is Larson at his commercial best, doing what he does so irresistibly well: cleverly bringing together two seemingly disparate yet inextricably linked lives to paint a fascinating, exciting portrait of a hugely significant age of cultural, social and technological change while evoking the darker side of human nature.

The first book in a fantasy series in the realm of Xandaria. Meghan Nosral, nicknamed Mouse, survived 16 surgeries before the age of 3. Now 8-yr old Mouse must deal with a new struggle in a world completely alien to her own. How much luck can one stone bring her?

This is a compelling story about how a series of events led the author to stop letting circumstances control his life. He gained a purpose and a plan to take charge and strive to improve and be successful in every area of his life. Although this story is about the authors journey of intentional personal development, the most important thing is your journey. As you read, you will be inspired to take on your own journey of personal development to reach for your highest potential. This is a book not just to read but to use. Through evaluation exercises you will gain your own life's purpose statement that you will use to put together a specific and deliberate plan to improve in every are of your life.Whatever the outcome, I can promise you will a more successful person after reading this book.

A book of poetry.

A look at modern marketing chronicles the pursuit of the American consumer, describing how companies use spies, hidden cameras, computers, and sonar and EEG machines to understand what shoppers want. 15,000 first printing.