The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 2 March 1998
by Walter Lord
On the night of April 14-15, 1912, the great ship Titanic sank, taking 1502 people into the icy waters with it. This book is a retelling of that haunting story, based on the testimony of 63 survivors of the disaster. The book is engagingly written, not merely testimonials, but condensed into a riveting narrative of the time between the sighting of the iceberg, 37 seconds before impact, and the time the last survivors were taken aboard the Carpathia. Lord captures the shock of that night, and the tragic twists that contributed to such a great loss of life. This includes the astounding and controversial role of a ship within sight of the sinking Titanic, and the social order that resulted in more first class male passengers surviving than steerage children. A 1958 movie was based on this book, but the realism of the book can hardly be matched, even by the more recent two hundred million dollar blockbuster film. A lot of the mystery of the sinking is illuminated by the book, but the story remains just as haunting.