Quotes from Erik Larson

The two often sheltered from air raids in the room of another resident, Australian prime minister Menzies, whom Pamela had come to know well because of her connection to the Churchills. Menzies occupied a large suite on the Dorchester's much-coveted first floor. The women spent nights on mattresses laid out in its windowless entry alcove. Now

would be no skipping and dancing. No heathen. The exposition was a dream city, but it was Burnham's dream. Everywhere

ONE MORNING IN AUGUST 1886, as heat rose from the streets with the intensity of a child's fever

U-boats in fact traveled underwater as little as possible, typically only in extreme weather or when attacking ships or dodging destroyers.

He added beneath his name a single word: "Finis.

Ned watched her. She was young and pretty—a "handsome blonde," as he later described her.

gin daisy, which

It was the first in a sequence of impossibly rich and voluminous banquets whose menus raised the question of whether any of the city's leading men could possibly have a functional artery.

I was born with the devil in me," he wrote. "I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing.

All the young are in the net," he wrote, "anyone who tried to keep out of being a Nazi is hazed till they change their mind; a form of mass cruelty which exists only in such a country.

Whether out of professional pique or some instinct of fear, the ship's mascot—a cat named Dowie, after Captain Turner's predecessor—fled the ship that night, for points unknown.

It was a difficult ride for him. He had passed this way before, to bury John Root. The fair had begun with death, and now it had ended with death.

Churchill was unusually crabby. "Too little sleep made the P.M. irritable all morning," Colville wrote. By lunch, he was "morose." The proximate cause had nothing to do with the war or Roosevelt but, rather, with his discovery that Clementine had used his treasured honey, sent to him from Queensland, Australia, for the frivolous objective of sweetening rhubarb.

After noting that Germany's submarine campaign had sharply reduced traffic from America, Churchill told Runciman: "For our part, we want the traffic—the more the better; and if some of it gets into trouble, better still.

The list of appetizers included stuffed eagles' eggs.

In England, they're filled with curiosity and keep asking: 'Why doesn't he come?' " Hitler said, infusing every gesture with irony. "Be calm. Be calm. He's coming! He's coming!" The laughter from the audience verged on the maniacal.

For those passengers who did feel unsettled by the German warning, Cunard offered comforting words. Wrote passenger Ambrose B. Cross, "From the very first the ship's people asseverated that we ran no danger, that we should run right away from any submarine, or ram her, and so on, so that the idea came to be regarded as a mild joke for lunch and dinner tables.

Unterseebootkonstruktionsbüro

She eventually adopted the "gold collar" and married a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Wallace Riddle. She achieved her goal of creating a progressive boys' school as a memorial to her late father. She built it in Avon, Connecticut, and called it Avon Old Farms School, which exists today.

A gyroscope kept the torpedo on course, adjusting for vertical and horizontal deflection. The track lingered on the surface like a long pale scar. In maritime vernacular, this trail of fading disturbance, whether from ship or torpedo, was called a "dead wake.

throughout America, who

Tea was comfort and history; above all, it was English. As long as there was tea, there was England.

Only holders of a cipher "key" could divine the underlying text, but possessing the codebooks made the whole process of solving the messages far simpler. To exploit these treasures the Admiralty established Room 40.

Torpedoes were expensive, and heavy. Each cost up to $ 5,000— over $ 100,000 today— and weighed over three thousand pounds, twice the weight of a Ford Model T.