Erik Larson

Erik Larson grew up in Long Island, and studied Russian History at the University Pennsylvania, where he graduated summa cum laude (“with highest honors”). In 1978, he graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism. Within five years, he was working as a staff writer for the Wall Street Journal, while also contributing articles for other prestigious publications like Harper’s, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic. In 1992, he published his first full-length book, The Naked Consumer, about invasions of privacy in modern business. While The Naked Consumer won Larson some good reviews, it wasn’t until 1999, when he published Isaac’s Storm, his bestselling history of the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, that one of his books experienced significant national success. Since Isaac’s Storm, Larson has written several books: The Devil in the White City (2003); Thunderstruck (2006), about the lives of Guillermo Marconi and the serial killer Hawley Crippen; In the Garden of Beasts (2011), about an American family living in early Nazi Germany; and Dead Wake (2013), about the sinking of the Lusitania. Larson is highly respected in the journalistic world for his willingness to travel and immerse himself in his research — in order to write Thunderstruck, for instance, he traveled to Nova Scotia, Rome, Munich, Cape Cod, and London.