The #1 New York Times best-selling author of In the Garden of Beasts presents a 100th-anniversary chronicle of the sinking of the Lusitania that discusses the factors that led to the tragedy and the contributions of such figures as President Wilson, bookseller Charles Lauriat and architect Theodate Pope Riddle.

On November 30, 1916, a freighter left Kiel, Germany harbor and would not touch land for fifteen months. It was the beginning of an astounding 64,000-mile voyage that would take the ship around the world, leaving a trail of destruction and devastation. This was no ordinary freighter, this was the Wolf, a disguised German warship. In this account of an audacious, lethal World War I expedition, Richard Guilliatt and Peter Hohnen depict the Wolf 's assignment:...

On January 25, 1917, HMS Laurentic struck two German mines off the coast of Ireland and sank. The ship was carrying 44 tons of gold bullion to the still-neutral United States via Canada in order to finance the war effort for Britain and its allies. Britain desperately needed that sunken treasure, but any salvage had to be secret since the British government dared not alert the Germans to the presence of the gold. Lieutenant Commander Guybon Damant...