Dodd, the first American ambassador to Nazi Germany, and his daughter Martha, and Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (2015).īorn in Brooklyn, Larson grew up in Freeport, Long Island, New York. Holmes, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and An American Family in Hitler's Berlin (2011), a portrayal of William E. Although he has written several books, he is particularly well-know for three: The Devil in the White City (2003), a history of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and serial killer H.

Currently-lives in New York City and Seattle, WashingtonĮrik Larson is an American journalist and nonfiction author.

Awards-Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime, 2004.Education-B.A., University of Pennsylvania M.S., Columbia University.Raised-Freeport (Long Island), New York.The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together. It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest and of course 10 Downing Street in London.ĭrawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports-some released only recently-Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally-and willing to fight to the end. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away.įor the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

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