A Team Movie Review: Erik Larson's Thunderstruck

Amazon Customer: Good

United States on Nov 14, 2023

David Crow: Erik Larson is one of the all-time greats. He makes history fun and always weaves together two stories that somehow link. His prose is perfect, telling you everything without making it seem like it. This book is a fascinating look at Marconi's personal and professional life. His race to produce the wireless was fraught with many challenges and his personal life was sad, mostly because he valued it so little. Larson also tells of the murder committed by Dr. Crispen, as unlikely a tale as one would find, and the love he found, but was unable to keep. Larson is the master.

United States on Oct 31, 2023

Norm Macneall: too much weather related detail. Got tired of reading the story.

Canada on Apr 04, 2023

Free Range Clickin': "Thunderstruck" is a daring title for a book. This one didn't live up to it. I've had a livelier time from random shocks of static electricity at home in dry weather. Maybe you have to know, and care, a good deal about the science of electricity and wireless communications, for this book to spark your interest. I don't, and it didn't.

I paid a good price for the Kindle book, which I already regretted. As I'm writing this review, it's on sale at a deep discount, which sharpens the regret. Ouch.

Erik Larson is a skilled researcher and writer. I've enjoyed his other books, most recently the excellent Dead Wake. Sadly, this book was just a slog. The two main characters - Marconi and Crippen - were never revealed in a way that enlivened them to me as sympathetic or even interesting human beings. Marconi was a spoiled, self-centered, obsessive with a marked deficit of empathy for other human beings. Crippen was a drifting grifter, chasing riches in the medical world including "patent medicines."

Reader, I finished it. But only - from a third of the way into the book - by skipping the details of Marconi's countless failed experiments and demonstrations, and the fits...

United States on Jul 04, 2022

Rob Beckett: Personally, this is the author’s best book. It follows the career of the Italian inventor, Marconi, as he experiments with a revolutionary technology: wireless communications. He takes us first to Italy, then the UK and finally to the birthplace of wireless communication: Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island in eastern Canada. Concurrently with this history is the trans-Atlantic search for an English murderer using Marconi’s new technology.

Canada on Dec 16, 2021

G. C. Carter: The book entitled: “Thunderstruck” by Erik Larson was another enjoyable and entertaining book by Erik Larson. I highly recommend purchasing and reading it. It is a work of nonfiction written as if it were a novel. It weaves together two stories one of a murder mystery and the other of the story of Marconi and his contributions to wireless communications over many years around the year 1900. It will have a particular appeal to those with an interest in engineering and science and the continuing debate over whether theory or application are the fast way to improve technical products. As one of the valuable aspects of Marconi’s work involved ship to shore communications, which were later also valuable in at sea rescues this book will also have appeal to those who have sailed on the high seas in the military or as cruise passengers and those who are aware of the work of the international ice patrol. The book also introduces one to the value of patents both obtaining and defending them internationally and early examples of how start-up ventures worked in the UK.
Because I had read other books by Erik Larson, I selected this one after tiring of reading the umpteenth book on...

United States on Nov 14, 2020

Tip A Steinback: This my second dip into the works of newly-discovered Eric Larson, and I am again astonished by how he meticulously researches, gathers first-hand documentation and narratives, and then weaves it all together into what reads like a gripping novel. In 'Thunderstruck', Larsen tracks a gruesome murder in early 20th century London and intertwines the global race to discover wireless telegraphy. Both blend beautifully together in the final chapters. The only slight hiccup to this reader was a smidgen too much of the inventing stuff, but I will hastily, happily, aand greedily move forward to my next Larsen.

Canada on Oct 28, 2020

G. Palmer: A fascinating piece of social and technical history, well written and with occasional moments of levity. Erik Larson's repeated the device of interleaving two stories together like his previous book, but it doesn't quite work as cleanly this time round.

There, the 'White City' as a human construct, built to highlight the brightest of men's achievements, serves as an unknowing and unwilling lure to the deadly and dark ensnarement of 'The Devil' - Almost a case of "The brighter the light, the darker the shade"; In this book the tales of Marconi and Crippen are also related in parallel, but in a slightly hazy chronological order sometimes, and the two stories really only touch, make contact, at the end.

It doesn't make it any less satisfying which is why I've given it a 5*, and it's fascinating to read about people's incredulous amazement that any kind of messages could be sent through the ether (given how wireless technology in all its forms is absolutely embedded in our civilisation, just a hundred or so years later).

On a total side-note, years ago I'd read a book about the sinking of the Empress of Ireland, captained by Henry Kendall - It was interesting to...

United Kingdom on Apr 26, 2011

Ian Chapman-Curry: Two very different stories, one a tale of betrayal, intrigue and murder and the other the crackling history of the development of radio transmission, but melted together in this third delicious offering from historian and writer Erik Larson.

Larson's other books have stuck to a winning formula, and he does not deviate from this simple framework for Thunderstruck. In the Devil and the White City the story of the Chicago World Fair, and the awesome demonstration of science and technology that went with it, was narrated alongside the gruesome story of mass murderer [ ]. In the Drowning of Galveston the nascent science of meteorology was tested and found flawed with devastating consequences, and again Larson wove a story of technological progress around human suffering.

In Thunderstruck the technological progress takes the starring role. The main thrust of this book is the story of radio waves, wireless telegraphy and the intriguing personalities that developed them. This is the story of Marconi, Fleming, Lodge and Tesler in an age where the transmission of messages through the ether to once isolated ships seemed as miraculous as the psychic and metaphysical...

United Kingdom on Jun 17, 2007