In her riveting account of this enormous and controversial tragedy, Diana Preston recalls both a pivotal moment in history and a remarkable human drama. The story of the Lusitania is a window on the maritime world of the early 20th century: the heyday of the luxury liner, the first days of the modern submarine, and the climax of the decades-long German-British rivalry for supremacy of the Atlantic. Above all, it is the story of the passengers and crew on that fateful voyage --- a story of terror and cowardice, of self-sacrifice and heroism, of death and miraculous survival.

As World War I escalated, Germany forever altered the way war would be fought. On April 22, 1915, German canisters spewed poison gas at French and Canadian soldiers in their trenches; on May 7, the German submarine U-20 torpedoed the passenger liner Lusitania, killing 1,198 civilians; and on May 31, a German Zeppelin began the first aerial bombardment of London and its inhabitants. While each of these momentous events has been chronicled in histories of the war, celebrated historian Diana Preston links them for the first time.