|
|
Books : A Night to Remember (BBC Radio Collection)In association with Amazon.comby: Walter Lord  Dewey Decimal Number: 364 EAN: 9780563382515 ISBN: 0563382511 Label: BBC Audiobooks Ltd Manufacturer: BBC Audiobooks Ltd Number Of Discs: 2 Number Of Items: 2 Publication Date: January 05, 1998 Publisher: BBC Audiobooks Ltd Studio: BBC Audiobooks Ltd Related Items:
Editorial Review: Product Description: Martin Jarvis reads his own abridgement of the bestselling 1956 account of the sinking of the "Titanic". It combines the elements of a thriller and a social record, recording in detail the events of the horrific night in 1912 when the "unsinkable" liner struck an iceberg in the Atlantic. Amazon.com Review: 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. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Definitive Titanic BookI just re-read Night to Remember for the first time in many years, and was reminded why it got me hooked on Titanic lore. It is truly the definitive book on Titanic and one of the best works of narrative history ever written. Its pacing, style, and most importantly its factual underpinning make it a timeless classic, Rating:  - The definitive account.I enjoyed the book. Now it's obvious where lots of information came from that appears in later Titanic books. Rating: - A Book To RememberWalter Lord did his homework on the Titanic's fateful night in this unforgettable and memorable book. He did not need to create fiction or suggest anything to the contrary. In fact, he writes about it from the survivor's perspectives. Despite the horrors, what shocked me was the situation in the lifeboats in the aftermath of shell-shocked people who have watched their loved ones, mostly their husbands, go down with the ship. I don't know why California didn't seek to assist them or inquire about ... Read More Rating: - The undisputed champ after 52 yearsTwo things set A Night to Remember apart from every other book and film on the subject of the Titanic: First, with the exception of the ship breaking up as it sank (and the official record, with its conflicting testimony, shows it could have been written either way in 1955) and the use of the first SOS (which Lord corrected in later editions), there is not a single fact in the book that has ever been proven wrong. And, oh, how supporters of Capt. Lord of the Californian have tried. ... Read More Rating:  - A Minute-by-Minute Account of the Sinking of the TitanicAt 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 ... Read More Browse for similar items by category:
|
||