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The Titanic
Books Page |
Created 8/4/2007 |
Modified 8/12/2007 |
Book |
Description |

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An Amazon reviewer writes: "At 11:40 p.m. on the night of April 14, 1912, the White Star liner
Titanic, on its maiden voyage to New York, struck an iceberg in
the north Atlantic. Less than three hours later, the ship known to
the world as "unsinkable" was on her way to the bottom
of the sea.
The unexpectedness of the event, along with the shocking number of
lives lost (more than 1500 by most estimates) and the many stories
of carelessness and incompetence contributing to the disaster,
cemented the Titanic into the collective consciousness of Western
culture. Countless articles, exhibits, books, and movies (the most
famous, released in 1997, grossed over $1.8 billion in worldwide
revenue) have documented and fictionalized various aspects of the
tragedy. Even nearly a hundred years later, it would be difficult
to find someone who had never heard of the Titanic.
In 1955, while many of the survivors of the Titanic's first and
only voyage were still alive--and before the journalistic novel
became fashionable as a genre--Walter Lord researched and wrote a
minute-by-minute account of what happened during the ship's final
night. Called A Night to Remember, Lord's account provides an
interesting blend of minute details and broad sweeping overviews
in its description of what happened onboard the ship.
The book is easy to read and goes very quickly. Lord gives his
prose a very journalistic feel, with short sentences and easy
language. Entertaining is hardly the right word to use for a
description of an event that claimed so many lives, but compelling
describes the account pretty well. Lord puts readers right on the
deck of the doomed ship, and then right into the lifeboats and,
later, into the courtrooms and newspaper editors' offices during
the aftermath of the sinking.
Chapters are entitled with snippets of the dialog that occurs
within each. Examples include "There's Talk of an Iceberg,
Ma'am," "God Himself Could Not Sink This Ship,"
"There Is Your Beautiful Nightdress Gone," and, perhaps
most poignant, "Go Away--We Have Just Seen Our Husbands
Drown."
The book's primary weakness is that in trying to include glimpses
of so many people's experiences, Lord was mostly unable to go into
much depth with any of the individual characters. Unlike later
books in this genre--such as Blackhawk Down or The Perfect Storm,
both of which describe in detail the experiences of a relatively
small number of people during catastrophic events--A Night to
Remember has to catalogue the experiences of over 2,000
individuals. Lord manages to include a lot of names, but without
any background or detail, they quickly become meaningless.
Though the scope of the book (probably necessarily) minimizes the
amount of emotion connected with the tragedy, there are a few
emotive moments when the reader realizes along with a child or a
wife that a beloved husband or father will not be coming on a
lifeboat. Depictions of the wireless operator sleeping onboard the
nearby Californian, panicky passengers in lifeboats violently
refusing to assist drowning swimmers, and determined high-society
men donning formal evening dress to "go down like
gentlemen" evoke flashes of emotion as well.
Overall, the book is worth reading for its historically accurate
picture of what actually happened on that cold April night. Though
it's no literary masterpiece, it is informative and interesting,
particularly for anyone who has seen James Cameron's movie or read
Clive Cussler's book and would like to know the real story. The
book contains nothing objectionable (except for the event itself),
and is suitable for any reader. I recommend it without
reservation." |

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An Amazon reviewr writes: "Calling this 'the sequel to _A Night to Remember_' is slightly
misleading. Rather than the storytelling style employed to relate
the story of the sinking of the Titanic, this is almost a
collection of 17 1-chapter essays about various points of the
disaster. Excellent stuff, but if you were expecting, say, the
story of the Congressional and Parliamentary investigations of the
disaster, you need to look elsewhere, e.g. Wyn Craig Wade's _The
Titanic: End of a Dream_.
"Unsinkable Subject" - Overview of the popular
fascination with Titanic.
"What's in a Name?" - The actual launching of Titanic
from Harland & Wolff's shipyards.
"Legendary from the Start" - Titanic was indeed
popularly supposed to be unsinkable, but the trend of sacrificing
safety features for competitiveness had actually taken hold during
her design.
"Had Ships Gotten Too Big for Captain Smith?" -
Explores Smith's record, including a near-collision in harbor with
Titanic's sister ship, the Olympic.
"Our Coterie" - The group of first class passengers,
including Col. Gracie, mentioned in _A Night to Remember_.
"Everything Was Against Us" - Contrasts the ice
warnings, lack of coordination between radio room & bridge,
and lookouts, with the notion that the accident was a
one-in-a-million chance.
"The Gash" - The collision itself.
"I Was Very Soft the Day I Signed That" - How and why
ships the size of Titanic could legally sail while carrying so few
lifeboats.
"What Happened to the Goodwins?" - Facts and figures
about 1st class vs. 3rd, contrasting White Star's implication that
those people down there couldn't understand English, with the
Goodwin family (an electrical engineer and his family, emigrating
from London to New York, all of whom were lost, including the
6-year-old).
"Shots in the Dark" - Explores the stories about
Murdoch, one of the officers loading the lifeboats, and whether
shots were fired.
"The Sound of Music" - An in-depth look at the
"Nearer My God to Thee" myth, and the 2 bands on the
Titanic. (I was aggravated to learn that that entire, touching
sequence with the cornet in _Raise the Titanic!_, which I loved as
a kid, was made up from whole cloth - the musicians were just as
courageous as the movie made them out to be, but no cornet
players.) And if you're a professional musician who thinks *your*
agent is heartless, wait till you read this.
"She's Gone" - Compares the eyewitness accounts of
Titanic's last moments with what we now know.
"The Electric Spark" Captain Rostron of the Carpathia,
who picked up the survivors at great personal risk.
"A Certain Amount of Slackness" Discussion of Captain
Lord (no relation to the author) of the Californian, in sharp
contrast to the preceding chapter.
"Second-guessing" - The inquiries and subsequent
litigation (Lord's treatment of Senator Smith should be contrasted
with Wade's more detailed treatment, but then Wade has a whole
book to play with).
"Why Was Craganour Disqualified?" What happened to
some of the survivors. (Craganour, owned by a member of the Ismay
family, was disqualified from winning a major British horse race.)
"Unlocking the Ocean's Secret" - The search for the
Titanic, leading up to Robert Ballard's successful attempt in 1985
(written before others began plundering the ship for relics)."
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An Amazon reviewer writes: "This is the most detailed writings about the idea of the Titanic,
step by step through the building, along with the people involved
in the process from beginning to end. It is a beautiful hardcover,
very large and impressive book! The pictures included make this
book an absolute must have for any fan of the real Titanic. This
is by far the best collection of words and photographs combined to
walk the reader through this tragedy, the circumstances
surrounding it; the many answers still unkown; the myths and
rumors as well the documented facts of the disaster. I can't
recommend this one enough!! Trust me...it's worth every cent!!"
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An Amazon reviewer writes: "The most scrupulous of the recent spate of books on the Titanic
disaster, Wyn Craig Wade's book relies on survivors' accounts to
establish some startling facts, including that almost two-thirds
of the first-class passengers survived while only a quarter of the
steerage passengers made it to safety. And that those in the
lifeboats chose to ignore the piteous cries of passengers in the
water, almost all of whom perished. This chilling account
demonstrates that the Titanic's sinking was in many ways entirely
avoidable."
Author Wyn Wade writes: "By 1907, the time was finally
right for the elite of the Gilded Age to duplicate the stunning
achievement of the Crystal Palace and The Great Exhibition of
1851. The new project was an amicably concerted effort
between rich American capitalists and British
Manager-Industrialists. Marriages between wealthy Americans
and aristocratic Britons had been in vogue for some time, and this
new venture - comprising a union between Yankee greenbacks and
British traditions - seemed assured of success where previous
attempts had failed. Like the Prince's Consort's vision, the
monstrous size of the new palace required an enormous investment
of capital. Even with a huge foundation in American stocks
and securities, $6 million worth of 4.5 debentures had to be
marketed and, in fact, were sold with relative ease. Like
the former palace, the new one promised to be a spectacle of the
latest scientific technology - a colossal showcase featuring
"all that is useful or beautiful in nature or in
art." Once again it would provide a splendid setting
for the celebration of the spirit of its age - presided over by
Anglo-Americans, of course. A crucial difference figured
between the new and the old projects, however. Whereas the
former venture had united the civilized nations in resplendent
triumph, the new one was to unite the world in an appalling
tragedy. The Gilded Age had pushed the Victorian Dream well
beyond anything imaginable in 1951. The new palace had been
designed to float."
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An Amazon reviewer writes: "This is the Titanic book you are looking for. Far from being one
of the many novelizations or non-fiction novel type history
reports, this is testimony straight from the survivor's mouths
about what happened the night disaster struck. We are all familiar
with C-Span senate hearings of the past few decades, but this is
one of the interesting ones condensed into an exciting and
informative volume. Questioning began mere days after the accident
as the Carpathia pulled into New York with the few souls who made
it. Even the slightly repetitive nature of the senator's questions
from person to person revealed a new fact or two about the sinking
of the unsinkable ship.
For those whose knowledge of the Titanic comes mostly from James
Cameron, this volume is a wealth of first hand information that
didn't get covered in the blockbuster film. Most shocking was that
the ship, the Californian, was within sight of the Titanic and saw
her distress rockets but didn't come to her aid, even though they
could have gotten there before the ship sank. This volume also
covers other interesting aspects of the case like the yellow
journalism practiced as papers vied for exclusive rights to
stories, Bruce Ismay trying to get everyone on a ship back to
England before they could be questioned in America and The Wall
Street Journal giving false reports that Titanic was fine so that
certain stocks didn't plummet. Many of the controversial aspects
of the case are addressed to a satisfactory degree, but you can
see some pat answers and bet hedging in some of the testimony.
Fascinating Stuff!" |
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An Amazon reviewer writes: "This Titanic book is different from most others in being told
entirely from the perspective of survivors. Two of the surviving
passengers and crew tell of the ship's last hours. The first story
is told by passenger Lawrence Beesley, a science prof. on his way
to America. His account details the trip from Southampton to New
York. Beesley was a level headed individual who tells the story in
an almost detached fashion, without fear or hysteria. His detail
and objectivity make this my favorite eyewitness account. The
writings of Lightoller and Bride are excellent as well. They do a
good job of conveying the approaching terror people must have felt
as the ship went down. One realizes that they knew what would
happen, while many passengers did not. Archibald Gracie's chapter
was less good. It begins alright, but he ends up giving us a
detailed review of the lowering of each lifeboat, something any
later researcher could have done. And unless Gracie was taking
notes at the time, I find it hard to believe this was his
experience! But all in all, this book is a must for Titanic buffs.
It gives us a look into the tragedy that few other books can."
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An Amazon reviewer writes: "Donald Lynch and Ken Marschall are considered two of the world's
foremost experts on Titanic history. While Lynch is more the
historian, Marschall's talents also lie in his magnificent
maritime artwork. These men are so good and know their subject so
well, that director James Cameron used both as consultants on his
movie "Titanic," even to calling them in the middle of
the night! Lynch even made a cameo in the film (the first class
dad watching his son spinning a top). Both say to this day that
they still refer to the movie set as "Titanic" and not
"the set" because the details were so exact it was like
being on board her in reality. I have met both Lynch and Marschall
twice at Titanic Historical Society conventions, and they
definitely know their subject as is revealed in this book. (Thanks
to Lynch, I became interested in the black family who traveled second class. Now THERE'S a fact Cameron regretted he didn't get
to use because he knew critics unfamiliar with Titanic history
would have ignorantly screamed "That never happened.")
We not only find details of the White Star Line and the famous
ship's history -- from her design as one of the three
"Olympic" sisters (Olympic, Titanic, Britannic), but the
few photographs taken on-board; charts; deck plans; and numerous
anecdotes. But often, it is Marschall's recreations in his
wonderful artwork that will take your breath away, especially when
read alongside Lynch's narrative. To see paintings of her slowly
sinking into the Atlantic; the details of her stern high in the
air and the sight of tiny figures throwing themselves into the icy
water; even his art based on Dr. Robert Ballard's photographs of
the wreck site...you would have to be heartless to not be affected
by these. To also read the words of many of those few hundred who
survived is particularly touching, especially as they watched
Titanic go down, most with loved ones still on-board. This is a
wonderful book for anyone who -- like me -- fell in love with her
at some point in their lives, whether as a child or thanks to
Cameron's movie. This book -- along with Marschall's own "Art
of Titanic" (which includes work he even did as a young boy)
-- will make great additions to your collection of the real life
of the true "ship of dreams" and all who were touched by
her." |
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According to the back cover bio "Here, for the first time, is
the most complete story of the Titanic - the construction of
the largest and most luxurious ship had ever seen, her passengers
and maiden voyage, the terrifying night of the sinking, the
dramatic discovery, recovery, and conservation efforts, as well as
astonishing new scientific information and artifacts gathered
during recent expeditions to the ship. Finally, answers to
many of the enduring mysteries surrounding the sinking of the
Titanic |
The Titanic Conspiracy - Cover Ups and Mysteries
of the World's Most Famous Sea Disaster - By Robin Gardiner and
Dan Van Der Vat
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From the back cover: "The world's most famous disaster at sea continues to
fascinate. In an intriguing reassessment of the sinking of
the great ship, the authors of The Titanic Conspiracy raise many
questions including:
Why was the ship's helmsman packed off to South Africa?
And why did the ship's log go down with the ship?
Why did Captain Smith accelerate into the ice field of which he
had been warned many times? And why did he wait 25 minutes
to start the pumps that could have saved the ship? The book
reveals Snmith's astonishing accident records and exposes the
abysmal safety record of the White Star Line.
What caused the hole near the bow? The iceberg cracked
the plates along the ship's side, but this hole looks like the
result of an explosion.
Why is the position of the wreck irreconcilable with the
Titanic's final SOS calls?
Was the Titanic replaced at the last minute by her sister
ship, the already damaged Olympic, in a plot to recover the huge
losses she ran up? It would have required little more than
switching of a few name plates.
The Titanic Conspacy sheds new light on key evidence from the
official inquiries and transcripts of radio transmissions and
offers new insight gained from examination relics recovered from
the ship and from interviews with survivors. The authors
reveal the role of the shop's true owner J. P. Morgam (who at the
last, avoided sailing on the Titanic) and that White Star covered
up its own gross negligence by bribing key witnesses." |
EXTRA TITANIC - The Story of the Disaster in the
Newspapers of the Day
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The 'Titanic' disaster as told in contemporary newspapers &
magazines. Includes striking photos from Harpers, and the Daily
Graphic. This is a time capsule of the most notorious and
deadly seagoing tragedy of the 20th Century. |
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