It took author Michael McCarthy four years to get to the bottom of this epic disaster, in which the largest object civilization has ever managed to fly burnt up in less than one minute. Along the way, he found a tale of international intrigue, revealing a whistleblower, a cover-up, and corruption on two continents.
To build his definitive account of aviation’s most famous disaster, he drew on previously unpublished documents from the National Archives in Washington, archival collections in Germany, and declassified military records on both sides of the Atlantic.
McCarthy worked for twenty-two years for the Wall Street Journal, as a reporter and editor in New York and Chicago. He wrote about aviation and other industries. In 2014, he published Ashes Under Water: The SS Eastland and the Shipwreck That Shook America (Lyons Press). The book hit the New York Times e-book bestseller list in the summer of 2015.