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Link	Quote	Stars	Tags	Author
2434322	But old tensions and enmities persisted. Britain's King George V loathed his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany's supreme ruler; and Wilhelm, in turn, envied Britain's expansive collection of colonies and its command of the seas, so much so that in 1900 Germany began a campaign to build warships in enough quantity and of large enough scale to take on the British navy. This in turn drove Britain to begin an extensive modernization of its own ..			Erik Larson
118daa9	Olmsted's greatest concern, however, was that the main, Jackson Park portion of the exposition simply was not fun. "There is too much appearance of an impatient and tired doing of sight-seeing duty. A stint to be got through before it is time to go home. The crowd has a melancholy air in this respect, and strenuous measures should be taken to overcome it." Just as Olmsted sought to conjure an aura of mystery in his landscape, so here he urg..			Erik Larson
a0cb375	our growing conviction that no thoroughly honorable business-man who is this side of dotage ever advertises for a lady stenographer who is a blonde, is good-looking, is quite alone in the city, or will transmit her photograph. All such advertisements upon their face bear the marks of vulgarity, nor do we regard it safe for any lady to answer such unseemly utterances.			Erik Larson
4a0ecc8	he was known for throwing elaborate parties, known as "freak dinners"--perhaps most notably the "Gondola Party" he hosted in 1905 at the Savoy Hotel in London, where he filled the hotel's courtyard with water, dressed everyone in Venetian garb, and served dinner to guests aboard a giant gondola. Lest this be deemed insufficient, he arranged to have a birthday cake--five feet tall--brought in on the back of a baby elephant."			Erik Larson
9bf92d9	Cherbourg was leaving Liverpool, the ship			Erik Larson
20428d3	One soldier in the Ypres Salient, at Messines, Belgium, wrote of the frustration of the trench stalemate. "We are still in our old positions, and keep annoying the English and French. The weather is miserable and we often spend days on end knee-deep in water and, what is more, under heavy fire. We are greatly looking forward to a brief respite. Let's hope that soon afterwards the whole front will start moving forward. Things can't go on lik..			Erik Larson
db99546	that I ventured as far as my position would allow and by historical analogy warned men as solemnly as possible against half-educated leaders being permitted to lead nations into war.			Erik Larson
4efe350	At night thunderstorms arose often, shedding lightning that gave the terrain the pallor of a corpse. Fog would settle in for days, causing the edge of the cliff to look like the edge of the material world. At regular intervals the men heard the lost-calf moan of foghorns as steamships waited offshore for clarity.			Erik Larson
fc806c0	Intended to sound the alarm and raise England's level of naval preparedness, the story was entertaining, and frightening, but was widely deemed too far-fetched to be believable, for Captain Sirius's behavior would have breached a fundamental maritime code, the cruiser rules, or prize law, established in the nineteenth century to govern warfare against civilian shipping. Obeyed ever since by all seagoing powers, the rules held that a warship..			Erik Larson
0b49e1a	The reference to the Lusitania was obvious enough," he recalled later, "but personally it never entered my mind for a moment that the Germans would actually perpetrate an attack upon her. The culpability of such an act seemed too blatant and raw for an intelligent people to take upon themselves."			Erik Larson
7814553	Goebbels was known for his wit; Martha, for a time, considered him charming. "Infectious and delightful, eyes sparkling, voice soft, his speech witty and light, it is difficult to remember his cruelty, his cunning destructive talents." Her mother, Mattie, always enjoyed being seated next to Goebbels at banquets; Dodd considered him "one of the few men with a sense of humor in Germany"			Erik Larson
efb5891	It's all right to drill your crew, but why not drill the passengers.		preparation	Erik Larson
416eb0e	The United States is remote, unconquerable, huge, without hostile neighbors or any neighbors at all of anything like her own strength, and lives exempt in an almost unvexed tranquility from the contentions and animosities and the ceaseless pressure and counter-pressure that distract the close-packed older world." While"			Erik Larson
915614f	It is true that in this time people set their faces hard for photographs, partly from custom, partly because of deficits in photographic technology, but this crowd might not have smiled for the better part of a century. The women seem suspended in a state somewhere between melancholy and fury and are surrounded by old men in strange beards that look as if someone had dabbed glue at random points on their faces, then hurled buckets of white ..			Erik Larson
48e667d	become works of art so detailed, so precisely articulated			Erik Larson
1662a67	For the first time he began to wonder whether he should jettison his transatlantic dream and settle for something more quotidian, perhaps focus his company on ship-to-shore communication. There was			Erik Larson
f0fa58c	One of those who canceled citing illness was Lady Cosmo Duff-Gordon, a fashion designer who had survived the sinking of the Titanic. Another designer, Philip Mangone, canceled for unspecified reasons. Years later he would find himself aboard the airship Hindenburg, on its fatal last flight; he survived, albeit badly burned. Otherwise, the Lusitania was heavily booked, especially in the lesser classes.			Erik Larson
ac389d6	In an article about the warning, the paper quoted Cunard's New York manager, Charles Sumner, as saying that in the danger zone "there is a general system of convoying British ships. The British Navy is responsible for all British ships, and especially for Cunarders." The Times reporter said, "Your speed, too, is a safeguard, is it not?" "Yes," Sumner replied; "as for submarines, I have no fear of them whatever."			Erik Larson
10bd5c0	A British journalist, Sydney Brooks, writing in the North American Review, gauged America to be just as isolationist as ever. And why not, he asked? "The United States is remote, unconquerable, huge, without hostile neighbors or any neighbors at all of anything like her own strength, and lives exempt in an almost unvexed tranquility from the contentions and animosities and the ceaseless pressure and counter-pressure that distract the close-..			Erik Larson
094b102	That un-American institution, the trades union, has developed its un-American principle of curtailing or abolishing the personal freedom of the individual in a new direction, that of seeking, as far as possible, to cripple the World's Fair.			Erik Larson
7c690eb	A. Scott Berg's more recent Wilson; John Keegan's wrenching The First World War; Martin Gilbert's The First World War; Gerhard Ritter's The Schlieffen Plan; Lowell Thomas's 1928 book about World War I U-boats and their crews, Raiders of the Deep; Reinhard Scheer's Germany's High Sea Fleet in the World War; Churchill's The World Crisis, 1911-1918; Paul Kennedy's The War Plans of the Great Powers, 1880-1914; and R. H. Gibson and Maurice Prend..			Erik Larson
d7298c8	Passengers drank and smoked. Both; a lot. This was a significant source of profit for Cunard. The company laid in a supply of 150 cases of Black & White Whiskey, 50 cases of Canadian Club Whiskey, and 50 of Plymouth Gin; also, 15 cases each of an eleven-year-old French red wine, a Chambertin, and an eleven-year-old French white, a Chablis, and twelve barrels of stout and ten of ale. Cunard stockpiled thirty thousand "Three Castles" cigarett..			Erik Larson
00e48ef	I FIRST STARTED READING about the Lusitania on a whim, following my between-books strategy of reading voraciously and promiscuously.			Erik Larson
7b7c80c	Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir ine's blood.			Erik Larson
be048cb	Riders on the Ferris Wheel got the clearest, most horrific view of what happened next.			Erik Larson
8544079	constantly keep in mind that whatever has happened			Erik Larson
e5b33b1	With that news her life had been abruptly, irrevocably altered. Come			Erik Larson
2eacc9d	In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost. --DANTE ALIGHIERI, The Divine Comedy: Canto I (Carlyle-Wicksteed Translation, 1932)			Erik Larson
c44fa8f	he bought his farm. The grueling work that had so worn on him during his boyhood now became for him both a soul-saving diversion and a romantic harking back to America's past.			Erik Larson
7a8e4b8	German people, he said, would follow Hitler with absolute loyalty "provided they are allowed to have a share in the making and carrying out of decisions, provided every word of criticism is not immediately interpreted as malicious, and provided that despairing patriots are not branded as traitors." The time had come, he proclaimed, "to silence doctrinaire fanatics." --			Erik Larson
8d21ba5	camp: "If they should at any time attempt, even in a small way, to move from their criticism to a new act of perjury, they can be sure that what confronts them today is not the cowardly and corrupt bourgeoisie of 1918 but the fist of the entire people. It is the fist of the nation that is clenched and will smash down anyone who dares to undertake even the slightest attempt at sabotage." Goebbels acted immediately"			Erik Larson
9830f14	U-boats in fact traveled underwater as little as possible, typically only in extreme weather or when attacking ships or dodging destroyers.			Erik Larson
2343172	throughout America, who			Erik Larson
cacd96d	When the conversation turned to Germany's persecution of Jews, Colonel House urged Dodd to do all he could "to ameliorate Jewish sufferings" but added a caveat: "the Jews should not be allowed to dominate economic or intellectual life in Berlin as they have done for a long time." In this, Colonel House expressed a sentiment pervasive in America, that Germany's Jews were at least partly responsible for their own troubles. Dodd"			Erik Larson
0f9ba1d	There existed at this time a widespread perception that Hitler's government could not possible endure. Germany's military power was limited... And Hitler himself had begun to seem like a more temperate actor than might have been predicted given the violence that had swept Germany earlier in the year. On May 10, 1933, the Nazi Party burned unwelcome books -- Einstein, Freud, the brothers Mann, and many others -- in great pyres throughout Ger..			Erik Larson
953d051	strict economy in the use of natural resources has not been practiced, but it must be henceforth unless we are immoral enough to impair conditions in which our children are to live."25"			Erik Larson
b5f6e0e	Hardly anyone thought that the threats against the Jews were meant seriously," wrote Carl Zuckmayer, a Jewish writer. "Even many Jews considered the savage anti-Semitic rantings of the Nazis merely a propaganda device, a line the Nazis would drop as soon as they won governmental power and were entrusted with public responsibilities." Although"			Erik Larson
7bbca50	The article called Dodd a "small, dry, nervous, pedantic man ... whose appearance at diplomatic and social functions inevitably called forth yawning boredom."			Erik Larson
b5e92c4	There would be miracles at the fair--the chocolate Venus de Milo would not melt, the 22,000-pound cheese in the Wisconsin Pavilion would not mold--			Erik Larson
c18ec22	He died in his bed at his farm on February 9, 1940, at 3:10 p.m., with Martha and Bill Jr. at his side, his life work--his Old South--anything but finished.			Erik Larson
97f1a70	At Randolph-Macon, Dodd promptly got himself into hot water. In 1902 he published an article in the Nation in which he attacked a successful campaign by the Grand Camp of Confederate Veterans to have Virginia ban a history textbook that the veterans deemed an affront to southern honor. Dodd charged that the veterans believed the only valid histories were those that held that the South "was altogether right in seceding from the Union."			Erik Larson
d4abf21	He praised Hitler as "the man who has pulled his people from moral and economic despair into the state of pride and evident prosperity they now enjoyed." He particularly admired the Nazi "Strength through Joy" program, which provided all German workers with no-expense vacations and other entertainments. Wilson saw it as a powerful tool for helping Germany resist communist inroads and suppressing workers' demands for higher wages--money that..			Erik Larson
8afc307	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"			Erik Larson
0ab19bd	among the population of Americans who expressed anti-Semitic leanings, a common jibe described the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt as the "Rosenberg administration."			Erik Larson

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