I found a book facing out that I'd always meant to read: William Shirer's 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.' About a third of the way through, I suddenly, finally caught up to the fact that Shirer had been there in Berlin, from 1934 on, and was finally kicked out when the U.S. entered the war.

It troubled me that we had these reports of torture of detainees, we had people jailed at Guantanamo Bay who couldn't even talk to their lawyers and couldn't see the evidence against them - sort of fundamental bedrock civil liberties things.

I thought I'd go to a bookstore and see what moved me.

Whenever I finish a book, I start with a blank slate and never have ideas lined up.

I was never concretely aware of the extent of anti-Semitism in the United States and in the upper levels of the State Department.

I started reading the big histories and the small histories, the memoirs and so forth. At some point, I found the diary of William E. Dodd.

Hitler was such an anomalous character - he was so over-the-top chaotic in his approach to statesmanship, his manner and in the violence which overwhelmed the country initially. I think diplomats around the world... felt like something like that simply would not be tolerated by the people of Germany.

I pride myself on having a journalistic remove.

There's something so relentless and foul about Hitler and his people, and the way things progressed from year to year. It just got to me in the strangest way.

I like all kinds of music, though I tend to prefer jazz and classics.

I don't listen to music when I write, but I do turn on appropriate music when I read portions of my manuscripts back to myself - kind of like adding a soundtrack to help shape mood.

I'm very perverse. If someone tells me I have to read a book, I'm instantly disinclined to do so.

One of the really amazing things about the Lusitania saga was that, at the time, there existed in the admiralty a super-secret spy entity known as 'Room 40'.

In Washington, we had a grieving President Wilson, very, very much a lonely, grieving man. He had lost his wife of many years in August 1914 at about the same time the war broke out in Europe.

I didn't know anything about the Lusitania. I started reading because I had nothing else in my plate. And as soon as I start reading, I thought now this is interesting, you know, the hows of what happened, the actual - the actual sinking of the ship.

Captain William Thomas Turner, hero; villain, Schwieger. As I started doing research into him and into the submarine and so forth, I found that I was growing increasingly sympathetic to him. He's a young guy, 30, handsome, well-liked by his crew, humane.

Unalloyed heroes and unalloyed villains make me suspicious.

There's a powerful appeal in the 'I didn't know that' effect. I love it when people say, 'Gosh, I didn't know that.'

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.