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Douglas Brunt Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Douglas Brunt
Photo: Jesse Dittmar

Douglas Brunt

Douglas Brunt Biography

Douglas Brunt is the New York Times bestselling author of Ghosts of Manhattan, The Means, Trophy Son, and The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel, and host of the top-rated SiriusXM author podcast Dedicated with Doug Brunt. A Philadelphia native, he lives in New York with his wife and three children.

Douglas Brunt's website

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Interview

Inside Hook's Tobias Carroll in conversation with Douglas Brunt about his novel, The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel.

InsideHook: Early on in The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel, you mention that most people spell diesel with a lowercase "d" when they're talking about the engine. And as you pointed out, it should be capitalized because it was named after its inventor. When was the first moment you became aware that this engine's inventor had been somewhat overlooked in technological history?

Douglas Brunt: Seven years ago, I bought an old boat, which was a little run down and needed a refresh. I was going to redo the boat a little bit, and I asked an expert what I should do. He said that I should get rid of these gasoline engines and repower them with Diesel. At the time, I didn't know the difference between types of engines.

He said, "One hundred percent of boat fires come from gasoline engines, zero from diesel. There's no fumes. The fuel is stable. You can drop a lit match into a barrel full of diesel fuel and nothing will happen. And the efficiency is three to four times, so if you have this 200-gallon fuel tank, you go four times as far on diesel." So I repowered it to Diesel, still not knowing anything about this figure named Rudolf Diesel who had invented it way back in 1897.

A couple of years later, I was in-between novels. I've mainly ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Douglas Brunt at BookBrowse
The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Douglas Brunt but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Author Image Not Available

    Greg King

    Greg King was born in 1964. he first became interested in history at the age of twelve, after watching two films about Imperial Russia's last royal family, the Romanovs, after which he started reading all the books he could ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel

    Try:
    Lusitania
    by Greg King

  • Erik Larson

    Erik Larson

    Erik Larson is the author of six New York Times bestsellers, most recently The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, which examines how Winston Churchill and his "Secret Circle" ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel

    Try:
    Dead Wake
    by Erik Larson

We recommend 5 similar authors

View all 5 Read-Alikes

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