Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

by Erik Larson

Out on deck, Lawrence came across Elbert Hubbard, at this point one of the most famous men in America—the soap salesman turned author who had founded a collective in East Aurora, New York, called the Roycrofters, where men and women built furniture, bound books, made prints, and produced finely crafted goods of leather and metal. As an author, he was best known for his inspirational book, A Message to Garcia, about the value of personal initiative, and for an account of the Titanic disaster that centered on one woman’s refusal to enter a lifeboat without her husband; he was headed now to Europe with the goal of interviewing Kaiser Wilhelm. Hubbard was famous as well for coining crisp aphorisms, including “A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”

Why in the midst of great events there always seems to be a family so misnamed is one of the imponderables of history.

There was one regular feature: each concert ended with the audience standing to sing “God Save the King” and its American cousin, “My Country ’Tis of Thee.” Same tune, very different lyrics.