Erik Larson

“An artist, he paints with lakes and wooded slopes, with lawns and banks and forest-covered hills." — Daniel Burnham talking about Frederick…

— Erik Larson

My goal is to produce as rich and historical an experience for the reader as I possibly can, to the point where…

— Erik Larson

“No one had forgotten how in 1885 fouled water had ignited an outbreak of cholera and typhoid that killed ten percent of…

— Erik Larson

I didn't know anything about the Lusitania. I started reading because I had nothing else in my plate. And as soon as…

— Erik Larson

“As I look back on those days, most people in Chicago felt that way. Chicago was host to the world at that…

— Erik Larson

“Like most people, I acquired my initial sense of the era from books and photographs that left me with the impression that…

— Erik Larson

How you frame a debate is very important. When you call someone an 'illegal alien,' you've already stacked the deck against them.

— Erik Larson

I was once again looking for a book idea, and I remembered Holmes, but I specifically remembered that there was this World's…

— Erik Larson

The sinking of the Lusitania wasn't the proximal cause for the U.S. entering WWI. It was almost two years between the sinking…

— Erik Larson

It troubled me that we had these reports of torture of detainees, we had people jailed at Guantanamo Bay who couldn't even…

— Erik Larson

“Francis J. Bellamy, an editor of Youth’s Companion, thought it would be a fine thing if on that day all the schoolchildren…

— Erik Larson

There is no secret orchard where ideas grow. Oh my, do I wish there were.

— Erik Larson

I thought I'd go to a bookstore and see what moved me.

— Erik Larson

“As labor strife increased and the economy faltered, the general level of violence rose.”

— Erik Larson

Room 40 knew a U-boat was heading south to Liverpool - knew the boat's history; knew that it was now somewhere in…

— Erik Larson

In 1933, the Gestapo was founded to become - to be a secret police agency to keep tabs on political opposition and…

— Erik Larson

If I'd been living in Berlin in 1933-34, could I possibly have foreseen the Holocaust and all the corollary horrors of World…

— Erik Larson

“The thing that weighed on him most, however, was the irrationality of the world in which he now found himself. To some…

— Erik Larson

His weakness was his belief that evil had boundaries.

— Erik Larson

The reason I choose the stories I choose - and it's why it takes me so long to find ideas - is…

— Erik Larson

I never recreate dialogue. I have often been asked by people, 'You must have made this up because this is dialogue, right?'…

— Erik Larson

Chicago has disappointed her enemies and astonished the world

— Erik Larson

“Neighbors turned surly; petty jealousies flared into denunciations made to the SA—the Storm Troopers—or to the newly founded Geheime Staatspolizei, only just…

— Erik Larson

For 'Thunderstruck', I discarded about a dozen ideas. And then one afternoon, I was thinking about wireless. I don't know why. I…

— Erik Larson

Yes, William E. Dodd was the - became the - America's first ambassador to Nazi Germany. Prior to that, he was a…

— Erik Larson