Review: A Night to Remember

Title: A Night to Remember
Author: Walter Lord
Length: 208 pages
Publisher: Open Road Media
Genre: Non-fiction, History
Source: Purchased
My Rating:
Synopsis (from Goodreads): 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.

My Review: I picked this book up for the Kindle on 4/13/12 during the Kindle Daily Deal. I had never read a book about the Titanic before and as this had gotten great reviews and it was the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking I thought that it was a good time to change that.

I found this book engaging, engrossing, gripping and simply fascinating! It was a well written and, from what I could tell, thorough account of that night. I felt connected to the passengers and crew that were on the Titanic during this horrific time. One of the things I liked best about this book is that there weren't liberties taken, drama wasn't added to make the book more exciting. This was simply the story of the Titanic's last night. I felt that Lord also did a good job of discussing the social expectations at play when the Titanic sunk and how they were changed as a result of that tragedy.

I would not hesitate to recommend this book to anyone interested in the story of the Titanic.