Thunderstruck | Erik Larson | 2006
To set the stage for this review, let me say that author Erik Larson writes very readable accurate historical accounts, carefully researched and detailed, and hard to put down.
Among Larson’s titles is “Thunderstruck,” a book that weaves two narrative threads – one about Guglielmo Marconi’s invention of radio, and another about a collision between a narcissist and her narcissistic enabler.
Unlike me, Larson avoids pop-psychology terms like narcissism, instead letting his readers draw their own conclusions based on historically accurate quotations and events. Larson introduces the soft-spoken, apparently docile Hawley Crippen, and the focus of his affections Cora Turner, who later adopted the stage name Belle Elmore as her pathological narcissism came into full flower.
Having built this framework, Larson then constructs a second narrative thread, about Marconi’s invention of radio, leaving the reader to guess what connection these two threads have. And no, there’s no need for a spoiler alert – I instead encourage each of you to find out what happens next.
I would have liked more detail about Marconi and radio, and less about Crippen’s descent into … but wait, I promised not to reveal too much. Early radio transmitters relied on a crude scheme not unlike a tiny lightning stroke, repeated over time – a so-called spark-gap transmitter. These crude devices created a signal that made up in power what they lacked in selectivity. The result was that two such transmitters couldn’t be operated at once without interference, a problem later solved by vacuum tubes.
In his narrative Larson introduces Marconi’s assistant John Ambrose Fleming and mentions that Fleming invented the “thermionic valve”, later called the vacuum tube. But Larson wisely decides to elide over that part of radio’s history. It is vacuum tubes, and their modern replacements transistors and integrated circuits, that are responsible for the world we see around us. Larson knows how to avoid telling every story at once, a degree of self-control I appear to lack.
I’ve read many books, more than enough to sense when I’m being exploited by an author for reasons other than a desire to educate and entertain. By contrast and to me personally, Larson’s writing signals a wish to share a love for his source material. I think he succeeds.