But in the spring of 1915, any transatlantic crossing was overshadowed both by the war in Europe and by the still-fresh memory of the Titanic’s loss three years before. The ocean liner Lusitania leaving on her last voyage from New York, on Photograph: Bettmann/CORBISĪnd indeed the RMS Lusitania was the biggest and fastest ship in the prestigious Cunard Line fleet, able to make the New York to Liverpool crossing in under five days. “There is something absolutely magical about the era – or eras – in history when the ship was everything,” Larson says, still feeling romantic even after researching the gruesome aftermath of a torpedo attack.

Larson is much more eager to talk about maritime history, a passion that links this book with his earlier Thunderstruck, set a few years earlier aboard a different transatlantic liner, and telling the story of the chase to catch a murderer. Except that maybe hubris and overconfidence are always dangerous things.” “I’ve been asked a lot lately what message is there in the Lusitania for the modern day,” says Larson. Larson still thinks of himself as “a writer who does history” rather than a historian. He doesn’t invent scenes or speeches, and refuses to create composite characters to streamline a story. In a note to the reader, and again in our interview, he insists that “anything between quotes in my books is from a real historical document”. Larson was once a journalist, and he is a meticulous reporter. He admires Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler for “the cleanliness and austerity of their prose” and in a nod to Hemingway adds: “I’ve really tried to strip my writing of as many adjectives and adverbs as I possibly can.” That old saying, ‘I listened to that show so often, I wore the tape out?’ It was created because of shows like this.To propel his narratives, Larson freely raids the toolkit of fiction, particularly hardboiled detective novels, for “suspenseful elements – withholding, foreshadowing and so forth”. “Even with hundreds of tapes at my fingertips, I returned to these 1973 shows frequently. There was a fresh, nimble feel that was entirely different from the 1972 Dead sound taking all of the great elements of the Year of Europe and building upon that excellence,” said legacy manager David Lemieux in a statement. “In my early tape-trading days, I only had a few 1973 shows, but my goodness, did I ever love them. The collection will be worth $190 and will be limited to 10,000 numbered copies. The entire box set is about 20 hours long and features audio from the group’s show in Des Moines, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and two shows in Washington D.C., between May 13 and June 10, 1973. On Tuesday, the Grateful Dead announced the release of Here Comes Sunshine 1973, a 17-CD boxset featuring five previously unreleased concerts. Deadheads will relive the Spring of 1973 thanks to a new, limited-release boxset.

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