I'd always been interested in maritime history, especially the great liners. I'd have done a book about the Titanic if it hadn't already been done to death by James Cameron and Celine Dion.

To me, nuclear weapons are the secret crisis of our time. Frankly, everyone needs to reread John Hersey's 'Hiroshima.'

I started deliberately looking for characters, ideally outsiders and ideally Americans. So I just started reading widely, as I tell my students to do: read voraciously and promiscuously.

The SA, that is the - shorthand, those are the storm troopers. Those are the folks who are commanded by Captain Ernst Rohm.

In 1933, the Gestapo was founded to become - to be a secret police agency to keep tabs on political opposition and so forth. Brand-new as of April 1933.

Yes, William E. Dodd was the - became the - America's first ambassador to Nazi Germany. Prior to that, he was a professor of history at the University of Chicago - mild-mannered guy.

President Hindenburg had ultimate say over whether the government would survive or not.

For 'Thunderstruck', I discarded about a dozen ideas. And then one afternoon, I was thinking about wireless. I don't know why. I guess because it's become so ubiquitous. I was thinking that maybe there's something I could do about the origin of wireless, so I did what any self-respecting person does these days: I Googled 'wireless.'

My secret weapon is my wife. She's the best judge. She's a scientist and a natural reader. We've developed a detailed code for how she marks a manuscript, and I think it's what saves me from wild digressions.

I usually look for stories with barriers to entry, something complex enough that no one else is going to do it.

I'm always looking for a sign - not in a spooky, supernatural way, but in a 'neurotic writer' kind of way.

It's like being involved in a detective story, looking for that thing that nobody else has found.

I never recreate dialogue. I have often been asked by people, 'You must have made this up because this is dialogue, right?' Anything in my books that is in quotes comes from some kind of living historical document: a letter, a memoir, a court transcript, a newspaper interview.

Every time I sit down to reread 'War and Peace' - I've read it three times - I feel as though I've lived another life.

I don't really have a bucket list, but if I did, one entry would be to dust off my college Russian and spend a big chunk of a year reading, or trying to read, 'War and Peace' as it was meant to be read, in Russian, with all that rumbly rocks-on-rocks poetry inherent to the language.

It's not my intent to write definitive history. 'Dead Wake' isn't a definitive history of the sinking of the Lusitania. It's my account.

Anytime you look at someone in detail, you're putting the camera on that person. What I typically look for is one or two or three really strong characters who will hold the narrative throughout the work.

The reason I choose the stories I choose - and it's why it takes me so long to find ideas - is that I'm looking for that very thing. I want an idea that begins, I want a middle that is compelling and will bring readers along, and I definitely want an ending.

At first glance, the story of the Lusitania doesn't seem like the sort of thing I would take on. I usually like ideas that are a little bit more complex, things that people don't know about - or maybe they once did, but now you bring it to life for them for the first time.

I'm an early riser, for one thing. This started back when our kids were small. My wife and I would get up at 4 A.M. so that we could have a couple of peaceful hours before they woke up. That pattern has continued. I get up, make coffee, and while it's brewing, I do 50 sit-ups.

Since I loathe the tedium of gym workouts, I take breaks for tennis with my eclectic group of tennis pals.

My office is tiny. I think most people would be shocked if they came to my home and saw it. It is, in fact, the former makeup room of a gorgeous local TV newscaster. I keep a neat desk. Clutter makes me anxious.

I read a book called 'Transatlantic', which is a history of the great shipping lines. Also, of course, I had read about the Titanic and saw Leo drowning at the end of the 'Titanic' movie and all that stuff.

What drove me to do 'Dead Wake' was that after doing the most preliminary of reading and scoping out what kinds of materials might be available in archives and so forth, I realized that this book - the research, the writing - would present me with a rare opportunity to explore to a full extent the potential for suspense in a nonfiction work.

My goal is to produce as rich and historical an experience for the reader as I possibly can, to the point where when somebody finishes reading the book, he or she emerges from it with a sense of having lived in the past.

I'm often associated with parallel narratives or dual narratives. The 'Devil in the White City' was a fluke.

My life! That's a long story, too. I was born in Brooklyn, New York, like half of the world, I think.

I was in Bucks County at the 'Bucks County Currier Times,' which is a great place to start for any reporter who wants to start out.

I was once again looking for a book idea, and I remembered Holmes, but I specifically remembered that there was this World's Fair thing in the background. I thought, 'I'll read about the fair.' I had nothing better to do. I'd dismissed about a dozen ideas, and I was getting sort of antsy. I started reading, and that's where I got hooked.

The thing I always tell my writing students - I'm not a full-time instructor, by any means, but periodically I've taught writing students - what I always tell them is that the most important thing in narrative nonfiction is that you not only have to have all the research; you have to have about 100% more than you need.

I write to be read. I'm quite direct about that. I'm not writing to thrill colleagues or to impress the professors at the University of Iowa; that's not my goal.

The telephone call that forever changed the lives of the Dodd family of Chicago came at noon on Thursday, June 8, 1933, as William E. Dodd sat at his desk at the University of Chicago.

With my research, I really need absolute confirmation of what actually happened, direct physical connections to the past.

The sinking of the Lusitania wasn't the proximal cause for the U.S. entering WWI. It was almost two years between the sinking and the war declaration, and President Wilson's request for war never mentions the Lusitania.

It was a civilian ship, and the Lusitania could outrun any submarine. So this population of people was very confident that Cunard and the Royal Navy would be looking after them. Why weren't they under convoy? That's the real question.

I find diplomatic histories the dullest of histories.

The one place where I do think our culture today has to be extremely careful is this whole thing about illegal aliens. Because any time you start defining a significant block of the population as 'others,' or as less than you, you start getting into dangerous waters.

I wouldn't say that I'm an Italian wine connoisseur. I do like red wine. I guess my favorites now are Bordeauxes. French.

I'm open to writing just about anything. I love writing the books that I write. They do tend to be on dark subjects, but I don't think of myself necessarily as a dark-humored person. I like having a lot of fun.

I had a nice part at big newspapers, small newspapers, and then I went to a very big newspaper - 'The Wall Street Journal.' I wrote longer pieces, and I got tired of working so hard on stories that had a shelf life of essentially one day. So then I started working on longer magazine pieces and realized then that you might as well be writing a book.

Isaac Cline was a creature of his times. He embodied the hubris of his times and, in many ways, was a victim of the storm, not just in material ways - loss of a family member and damage to the town - but also in metaphoric terms.

The head of the hurricane research division, Hugh Willoughby, told me that hurricanologists can predict the behavior of storms if those storms behave predictably.

What is clear is that in 1900, Galveston was growing fast, had already become the number one cotton port on the Gulf Coast, and was already being referred to as 'the New York of the Gulf.'

In 1900, 45 steamship lines served Galveston. Twenty-six foreign governments had consulates there. The storm damaged its reputation as a safe place for substantial investment by railroads then seeking to dominate various trans-continental routes.

The most painstaking phase comes when the manuscript is set in 'type' for the first time and the first proofs of the book are printed. These initial copies are called first-pass proofs or galleys.

One question that often comes up is why, in this age of blogs and tweets and instant digital communication of all kinds, it still takes so long to publish a book.

There is something about the name Berlin that evokes an image of men in hats and long coats standing under streetlamps on rainy nights.

I knew Berlin would have to become a kind of character in my new book, 'In the Garden of Beasts'. I had felt likewise about Chicago when I wrote 'The Devil in the White City' and Galveston with 'Isaac's Storm'.

A writer could spend years reading already-published books just to gain a grasp of the historical terrain.

I have found from experience that it is often interesting and useful to start from the edges and work inward - another flaw of mine. I seldom approach things directly. I would have made a great moth.