A Night to Remember
by Walter Lord
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Book Summary Information
Author: Walter LordIntroduction: Nathaniel Philbrick
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-01-07
ISBN: 0805077642
Number of pages: 208
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Book Reviews of A Night to Remember
Book Review: "God himself could not sink this ship"
Summary: 5 Stars
Sunday, the 14th of April, 1912. The Titanic, on her maiden voyage, struck an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. By 2:20 a.m. she had slipped under the sea. There were unheeded ice warnings from other ships. Her lifeboats were lowered, each far from filled to capacity. As she was listing to port and sinking at the bow, the crew of the Californian watched the strange ship's flares from only ten miles away, their wireless set shut down for the night. When her lights disappeared for good, the Californian decided she had steamed away. There were over one thousand five hundred souls lost.
Those are the facts you do know. Author Walter Lord delves deeper than just the historical facts in this spellbinding account. He successfully recreates the feeling of what it was like that tragic night on the ill-fated ship. There was gallantry, bravery and contemplation that fateful night. Mr. Guggenheim changing to evening dress. Mr. Ryerson insisting his wife's maid take his life belt. The firemen manning the boilers until the last possible second. Mr. Andrews, the ship's builder, alone and motionless in the smoking room, absorbed in his thoughts, his life belt tossed aside. The band played ragtime.
Mr. Lord has pieced together a fascinating account of the fateful events via painstaking research that brings us the events as they happened, minute by minute, from before the initial collision through the rescue by the Carpathia. His account is based on personal interviews with dozens of survivors, both passengers and crew, with whom he had "haunting conversations," making his vivid reconstruction of the events possible. The author also examined several thousand pages of official testimony given to the U.S. and British enquiries, as well as seeking out passengers' memoirs and periodical interviews.
And yet a bit of mystery remains. Mr. Lord notes, "The words quoted are given exactly as people remember them being spoken. Yet, there is a margin for error." Often, various people will remember a shared event somewhat differently, and Mr. Lord makes note of these discrepancies in his book. However, one thing is certain: the Titanic changed history in many ways. At the time, many saw the Titanic disaster as the end of an era. People felt small again. The Titanic had been declared unsinkable. Some felt man had become too big for his britches, and that this tragedy was a wake-up call for humanity. A unique legend was born that momentous night, one that has fascinated for generations. Walter Lord has created a classic and has done an admirable job of recording that fateful night's events for all to remember.
Summary of A Night to Remember
The classic minute-by-minute account of the sinking of the Titanic, in a 50th anniversary edition with a new introduction by Nathaniel Philbrick
First published in 1955, A Night to Remember remains a completely riveting account of the Titanic's fatal collision and the behavior of the passengers and crew, both noble and ignominious. Some sacrificed their lives, while others fought like animals for their own survival. Wives beseeched husbands to join them in lifeboats; gentlemen went taut-lipped to their deaths in full evening dress; and hundreds of steerage passengers, trapped below decks, sought help in vain.
Available for the first time in trade paperback and with a new introduction for the 50th anniversary edition by Nathaniel Phil-brick, author of In the Heart of the Sea and Sea of Glory, Walter Lord's classic minute-by-minute re-creation is as vivid now as it was upon first publication fifty years ago. From the initial distress flares to the struggles of those left adrift for hours in freezing waters, this semicentennial edition brings that moonlit night in 1912 to life for a new generation of readers.
First published in 1955, A Night to Remember remains a completely riveting account of the Titanic's fatal collision and the behavior of the passengers and crew, both noble and ignominious. Some sacrificed their lives, while others fought like animals for their own survival. Wives beseeched husbands to join them in lifeboats; gentlemen went taut-lipped to their deaths in full evening dress; and hundreds of steerage passengers, trapped below decks, sought help in vain.
Available for the first time in trade paperback and with a new introduction for the 50th anniversary edition by Nathaniel Phil-brick, author of In the Heart of the Sea and Sea of Glory, Walter Lord's classic minute-by-minute re-creation is as vivid now as it was upon first publication fifty years ago. From the initial distress flares to the struggles of those left adrift for hours in freezing waters, this semicentennial edition brings that moonlit night in 1912 to life for a new generation of readers.
James Cameron's 1997 Titanic movie is a smash hit, but Walter Lord's 1955 classic remains in some ways unsurpassed. Lord interviewed scores of Titanic passengers, fashioning a gripping you-are-there account of the ship's sinking that you can read in half the time it takes to see the film. The book boasts many perfect movie moments not found in Cameron's film. When the ship hits the berg, passengers see "tiny splinters of ice in the air, fine as dust, that give off myriads of bright colors whenever caught in the glow of the deck lights." Survivors saw dawn reflected off other icebergs in a rainbow of shades, depending on their angle toward the sun: pink, mauve, white, deep blue--a landscape so eerie, a little boy tells his mom, "Oh, Muddie, look at the beautiful North Pole with no Santa Claus on it."
A Titanic funnel falls, almost hitting a lifeboat--and consequently washing it 30 yards away from the wreck, saving all lives aboard. One man calmly rides the vertical boat down as it sinks, steps into the sea, and doesn't even get his head wet while waiting to be successfully rescued. On one side of the boat, almost no males are permitted in the lifeboats; on the other, even a male Pekingese dog gets a seat. Lord includes a crucial, tragically ironic drama Cameron couldn't fit into the film: the failure of the nearby ship Californian to save all those aboard the sinking vessel because distress lights were misread as random flickering and the telegraph was an early wind-up model that no one wound.
Lord's account is also smarter about the horrifying class structure of the disaster, which Cameron reduces to hollow Hollywood formula. No children died in the First and Second Class decks; 53 out of 76 children in steerage died. According to the press, which regarded the lower-class passengers as a small loss to society, "The night was a magnificent confirmation of women and children first, yet somehow the loss rate was higher for Third Class children than First Class men." As the ship sank, writes Lord, "the poop deck, normally Third Class space ... was suddenly becoming attractive to all kinds of people." Lord's logic is as cold as the Atlantic, and his bitter wit is quite dry.
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