Erik Larson (author)

Erik Larson is an American journalist and author of mostly historical nonfiction books. His books include Isaac's Storm, The Devil in the White City, In the Garden of Beasts, and Dead Wake. The Devil in the White City won the 2004 Edgar Award in the Best Fact Crime category, among other awards.

WWW eriklarsonbooks.com

Early life and education

Larson was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Freeport, Long Island, New York. He studied Russian history at the University of Pennsylvania and graduated summa cum laude in 1976. After a year off, he attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, graduating in 1978. He was inspired to go into journalism after seeing the movie All the President's Men.

Writing career

Larson's first newspaper job was with the Bucks County Courier Times in Levittown, Pennsylvania, where he wrote about murder, witches, environmental poisons, and other "equally pleasant" things. He later became a features writer for The Wall Street Journal and Time. His magazine stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, and other publications.

Books

Larson has written a number of books, mostly historical nonfiction. In a 2016 interview with the Knoxville Mercury, Larson stated he does all of his own research, asking, "why should I let anybody else have that fun?" He included among his literary inspirations David McCullough, Barbara Tuchman, David Halberstam, and Walter Lord.
Larson's 2006 book, Thunderstruck, intersperses the story of Hawley Harvey Crippen with that of Guglielmo Marconi and the invention of radio.
Larson released his first novel in audiobook format only, titled No One Goes Alone, on September 28, 2021.

Teaching and public speaking

Larson has taught non-fiction writing at San Francisco State University, the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, and the University of Oregon, and he has spoken to audiences across the United States.

Personal life

Larson has lived in Philadelphia; Bristol, Pennsylvania; San Francisco; and Baltimore. He and his wife, Dr. Christine Gleason, have three daughters. They reside in New York City and maintain a home in Seattle, Washington.

Works

Title	Year	ISBN	Publisher	Subject matter	Interviews, presentations, and reviews	Comments
The Naked Consumer: How Our Private Lives Become Public Commodities	1992		Henry Holt and Company	Consumer privacy, Market research
Lethal Passage	1994		Crown Publishers	Gun culture in the U.S., Gun law in the U.S., Gun politics in the U.S., Gun violence in the U.S.		The subtitle for the 1994 hardcover version is How the Travels of a Single Handgun Expose the Roots of America's Gun Crisis; The subtitle of the 1995 paperback version is The Story of a Gun.
Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History	1999		Random House	Isaac Cline, 1900 Galveston hurricane	, C-SPAN , C-SPAN , C-SPAN
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America	2002		Crown Publishers	World's Columbian Exposition, Daniel Burnham, H. H. Holmes	, C-SPAN , C-SPAN , C-SPAN
Thunderstruck	2006		Crown Publishers	Hawley Harvey Crippen, Guglielmo Marconi	, C-SPAN
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin	2011		Crown Publishers	William Dodd, Nazification of Germany	, National Public Radio , C-SPAN , C-SPAN
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania	2015		Crown Publishers	Sinking of the RMS Lusitania	, C-SPAN , C-SPAN , C-SPAN
The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz	2020		Penguin Random House	The Blitz, Winston Churchill in the Second World War	, C-SPAN
No One Goes Alone	2021		Penguin Random House	William James		Fiction; Audiobook only.
The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War	2024		Crown Books	American Civil War	, NPR