A Night to Remember (1955)

It was the height of opulence. An era when First Class traveled in style and servants catered to their every whim. Society had never been more confident of its advancements, and the Titanic was a testament to this. At eleven stories high and four city blocks long, she featured the best there was to offer. Her maiden voyage began on April 11, 1912. Just three days later, other ships began reporting sightings of ice. Many would heed those warnings, but so confident was Captain Smith in the Titanic's reputation for being unsinkable, that he ordered the ship to forge ahead at top speed straight into an ice field. Shortly before midnight, they struck an iceberg. What happened in the next few hours would forever change history.

The Bottom Line: At the time this book was published, it had been nearly 40 years since the Titanic had sunk. As the first major written work on the topic at the time, Lord had the rare opportunity to interview over 60 survivors and piece together the final hours of the Titanic. Back in the day, Lord's book climbed the bestseller list and remains the go-to resource on the disaster even today. It is very well researched and detailed. Highly recommended for history buffs and those interested in shipwrecks. Even today the fascination with the Titanic continues, and this book would appeal to anyone wanting to learn more.

For the complete review including Book Club Notes, please visit the Mini Book Bytes Book Review Blog. ( )

I learned about this book because it's mentioned in the first book of the House of Night series by PC Cast, Marked. She does that a lot in the House of Night series -- mentions other books and I really want to read all the books she mentions! I'm reading the House of Night series and hope to now read the books that she mentions in that series. This was the first and I'm glad I did.

Years ago, 1998 and around that time, I learned about the Titanic sinking and read all I could find on the topic but do not remember reading or knowing about this book -- maybe I thought it was fiction and I wasn't interested in reading a fictional telling of the sinking and was only interested in the facts. Either way, I really enjoyed sort of going back to that time, in my mind, and learning more about the sinking.

At the end of this reading, I looked to see when it was written and was really pleased to see it was written in 1955, which is so much closer to the actual sinking than 1985, when the Titanic was located at the bottom of the sea and the interest in it's sinking was sort of restarted.

Adrianne ( )

Today's cruise ships are basically floating cities. Able to carry more than 6000 people, the Oasis of the Seas (Royal Caribbean Line) is 5 times the size of the Titanic. But back in its day, more than 100 years ago, the Titanic was a wonder. It took thousands of men more than 2 years to build her. Titanic was 4 city blocks long and could carry more than 2,400 people. She was new....she was massive....and she was doomed. 2 years to build.....and the largest ship afloat in April 1912 took just under 3 hours to sink.

Walter Lord tells the story of one of the most famous ocean disasters from before the ship struck an iceberg to the aftermath of the sinking. Walter Lord interviewed more than 60 survivors of the disaster to write the book. A Night to Remember was an instant bestseller in 1955. A film version was released in 1958. Lord even consulted on the filming of the 1997 movie Titanic.

I'm not sure why the fate of the Titanic is such a compelling story. It might be the huge loss of lives, the loss of such a grand ship on its first voyage, passengers with such disparate lives all doomed to the same fate....or a combination of all of it. First Class passenger John Jacob Astor, one of the wealthiest men in the world in 1912, drowned in the Atlantic alongside poor immigrants from steerage. It hits home when you compare ticket prices in today's money....those who paid the equivalent of $50,000 for a first class passage died alongside those who struggled to raise the $460 for a steerage ticket. Lord hits home with the difference in treatment of the classes on board when he points out that only one first class child died....but 52 children from steerage perished. Some passengers in steerage never even made it up to the boat deck for a chance of a seat in a lifeboat.

I'm sure it's his interviews with so many survivors that makes this book so realistic. His descriptions are vivid and made me feel like I was almost there. I listened to the audio version of this book. A combination of Lord's story-telling and Fred Williams excellent narration kept me engrossed in the story from start to finish. I have read many many books on the Titanic, watched movies, listened to podcasts....for me, it's a story I just seem obsessed with. It's horrific...and mesmerizing at the same time. Lord makes the story about the people....not just the event. He tells the story of an Italian woman crying for her children on board the Carpathia, only to be reunited with them both; the first class passenger who refused to leave her Great Dane on board the ship so perished with her dog; and the stunned silence of the women in the lifeboats as they realized they had just witnessed more than 1000 people drown. It's about more than a luxurious boat that didn't survive its first Atlantic crossing.....it's about the loss of more than 1,500 people and the story of the last 3 hours of their lives.

Great book! The audio (Blackstone) is just shy of 5 1/2 hours long. Fred Williams does a great job of narrating. He reads at a steady pace and has a nice voice. Very entertaining listening experience.

Walter Lord also wrote books about Dunkirk and the attack on Pearl Harbor. I've got both on my TBR list now! ( )

A completely enthralling true account of the sinking of the Titanic. The author interviewed dozens of survivors and created a vivid picture of the tragedy. He balances facts and details with background stories of passengers and crew members. There were so many things that surprised me, like the Titanic being the first ocean liner to send an SOS and the horrible class discrepancies in who was saved. An excellent nonfiction book that has stood the test of time since its publication in the 1950s.

“But legends are part of great events, and if they help keep alive the memory of gallant self-sacrifice, they serve their purpose.”

“The Titanic woke them up. Never again would they be quite so sure of themselves. In technology especially, the disaster was a terrible blow. Here was the "unsinkable ship" -- perhaps man's greatest engineering achievement -- going down the first time it sailed.
But it went beyond that. If this supreme achievement was so terribly fragile, what about everything else? If wealth mean so little on this cold April night, did it mean so much the rest of the year?” ( )

This book is one of my 7th grader's summer reading assignments, so I thought I would take a crack at it first. I'm a bit skeptical that this book is a good fit for a 7th grader who is not a big reader -- the vocabulary and nautical terms are challenging, to say the least. That being said, it is extremely well written in a taut, analytical way. Not so coincidentally, I focused my full attention on Cameron's movie before I read the book. I can appreciate Cameron's attention to detail -- too bad there isn't a "director's cut," that shows more of the passengers, the boat and the crew, and less of Kate and Leo. As reader Kim O'Connell noted, I wanted more text and context, the way a Jon Krakauer or Erik Larson would have provided. I've now rented the British 1958 version of Lord's book, and my son and I will watch it together before he tackles this classic story. ( )