Erik Larson is an American journalist and author best known for narrative nonfiction that presents meticulously researched history with the characterisation, suspense and pacing of a novel. Before becoming a full-time author, he worked as a journalist and contributed to publications including The Wall Street Journal, Time and The New Yorker. His books have reached international audiences, with seven becoming national bestsellers. Larson generally concentrates on relatively brief historical episodes, using diaries, letters, official records and contemporary newspapers to reconstruct both major events and the private experiences of the people caught within them.
Larson’s major works cover disasters, crimes, wars and periods of political crisis. Isaac’s Storm reconstructs the destructive Galveston hurricane of 1900, while The Devil in the White City interweaves the creation of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair with the crimes of murderer H. H. Holmes. Thunderstruck combines the development of wireless communication with a transatlantic murder investigation; In the Garden of Beasts follows an American diplomatic family in Nazi Germany; and Dead Wake examines the sinking of the Lusitania. The Splendid and the Vile portrays Winston Churchill and his circle during the Blitz, while The Demon of Unrest traces the five months between Abraham Lincoln’s election and the attack on Fort Sumter. Larson’s books are history and narrative nonfiction rather than historical novels, but they are written to give documented events the immediacy and momentum of historical fiction.
