Last year, I asked every Chautauqua and Literary Scientific Circle author I interviewed what book they would want with them if they were on a desert island. I was fascinated by the responses, and so I decided to ask every CLSC author this year a different question: What book changed their life?
“I was really interested in Erik Larson’s talk yesterday. He took two years to research the book, Dead Wake, and two…
When author Erik Larson began his lecture Wednesday, he had to step carefully lest he reveal the ending to his book, this year’s Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle selection Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania.
Recognition Day is a scene out of time. White-clad graduates march, music plays, flower petals drift through the air. Lewis Miller and John Heyl Vincent are even there.
When people think of massive ships sinking at the turn of the 20th century, their thoughts might first go to the RMS Titanic, forever immortalized by James Cameron’s blockbuster movie, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio’s star-making performances and the tin whistle solo from Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.”
Martha Dodd was a young, beautiful American living in Berlin in 1933. The daughter of the U.S. Ambassador, she cavorted in elite circles of German society and fell in love with top Nazi officials.
Not until the first spasm of Hitler’s vicious executions did she turn against her suitors and become a Soviet spy.
The Chautauquan Daily 