Erik larson and biography

American author and journalist

This article is about the non-fiction author. For the comic book creator, see Erik Larsen. For the Disney animator, see Eric Larson.

Erik Larson (born January 3, 1954) is an American journalist and author of mostly historical nonfiction books. His books include Isaac's Storm (1999), The Devil in the White City (2003),In the Garden of Beasts (2011), and Dead Wake (2015). The Devil in the White City won the 2004 Edgar Award in the Best Fact Crime category, among other awards.

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

Erik Larson is the author of nine books and one audio-only novella. His latest book, The Demon of Unrest, is a non-fiction thriller about the five months between Lincoln’s election and the start of the Civil War.  Six of his books became New York Times bestsellers. Two of these, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz and Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, both hit no. 1 on the list soon after launch. His chronicle of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, The Devil in the White City, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and won an Edgar Award for fact-crime writing. It lingered on various Times bestseller lists for the better part of a decade and is currently in development at Disney Studios. Erik’s In the Garden of Beasts, about how America’s first ambassador to Nazi Germany and his daughter experienced the rising terror of Hitler’s rule, is currently in development with StudioCanal and Playtone.

Erik’s first book of narrative nonfiction, Isaac’s Storm, about the giant hurricane that destroyed Galveston, Texas, in 1900, won the American Meteorology Society’s prestigious Louis J. Battan Author’s Award. The Washington Post called it the “Jaws of hurricane yarns.” Erik is particularly pleased to have won the Chicago Public Library Foundation’s 2016 Carl Sandburg Literary Award for Non-Fiction.

His audio novella, No One Goes Alone, while a work of fiction, is a ghost story based on real-life events and characters, including famed 19th-century psychologist William James. Erik refers to it as a ghost story with footnotes.

He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Russian history, language and culture; he received a masters in journalism from Columbia University. After a brief stint at the Bucks County Courier Times, Erik became a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal, and later a contributing writer for Time