Erik Larson

They looked more like day laborers than seamen.

But one thing was quite clear_ he wrote. __B]eing broke didn__ disturb me in the least. I had started with nothing, and if I now found myself with nothing, I was at least even. Actually, I was much better than even: I had had a wonderful time._ Bloom went on to become a congressman and one of the crafters of the charter that founded the United Nations.

The intermittent depression that had shadowed him throughout his adult life was about to envelop him once again.

American political discourse had framed the Jewish problem as an immigration problem. Germany's persecution of Jews raised the specter of a vast influx of Jewish refugees at a time when America was reeling from the Depression.

Wasplike with their long slender hulls, these were ships not seen in these waters before. They approached in a line, each flying a large American flag. To the hundreds of onlookers by now gathered on shore, many also carrying American flags, it would be a sight they would never forget and into which they read great meaning. These were the descendants of the colonials returning now at Britain's hour of need....

No one cared what St. Louis thought, although the city got a wink for pluck.

It's all right to drill your crew, but why not drill the passengers.

He disliked the social obligations of the captaincy.

You wish you had not come. If there were not so many around, you would reach out your arms, with the prayer on your lips for it all to come back to you. It seems cruel, cruel, to give us such a vision; to let us dream and drift through heaven for six months, and then to take it out of our lives.

Germans grew reluctant to stay in communal ski lodges, fearing they might talk in their sleep. They postponed surgeries because of the lip-loosening effects of anesthetic. Dreams reflected the ambient anxiety. One German dreamed that an SA man came to his home and opened the door to his oven, which then repeated every negative remark the household had made against the government.

I will be on the look out for you, my dear girl," he wrote. "You must expect to give yourself up when you come." For this buttoned-up age, for Burnham, it was a letter that could have steamed itself open.

As a rule, I am very skeptical of tying books to anniversaries. I don't think readers care. I also feel that it just about guarantees that somebody else will be writing a book on the same subject, but being a former journalist, I'm always interested in, like, why write about something today? Why do it now?

One question that often comes up is why, in this age of blogs and tweets and instant digital communication of all kinds, it still takes so long to publish a book.

There began to appear before my romantic eyes...a vast and complicated network of espionage, terror, sadism and hate, from which no one, official or private, could escape.

Dodd acknowledged Congress's reluctance to become entangled abroad but added, "I do, however, think facts count; even if we hate them.

My between-books strategy was reading voraciously and on a whim.

My prophetic task would be twofold: to stand up to him, and to stand by him. To awaken his conscience, and to salve the pain this would cause him.

I always thought a shipwreck was a well-organized affair, but I've learned the devil a lot in the last five minutes.