Titanic, First Accounts: (Classics Deluxe Edition) [Paperback]

This book is interesting in that it gathers up first-hand accounts of the survivors of the Titanic. The information has been collected by the grandson of a survivor, Lawrence Beesley. He has some credible explanations why the Titanic still haunts the historical recollections for people today and especially on the hundredth anniversary of its sinking. He compares some of the accounts in his introduction; but this is where his service in sorting out this information ends.
It would have greatly aided the interest and understanding of the book if he would have written a short introduction to each version. There could have been information on who this passenger or employee was, and something about their history. Instead as we open the book there is no information concerning the story. We are left to read the account and try to assume any pertinent information about the writer. Many of the passages are from already published books, so we simply have the title and chapter number.

Accounts include chapters from 'The Loss of the Titanic" (his grandfather's book and newspaper articles) and Archibald Grace's `The Truth about the Titanic". There are reports from both the British and American inquiries and then chapters from `Sinking of the Titanic and "Great Sea Disasters". There is no new information here, so if you already have a collection of Titanic material, this might duplicate it. There is also no index which is always a help in historical interpretations. The recollections of Margaret "Molly" Brown are repeated word for word in 2 different locations in the book. The author also states she was very well educated. She had an 8th grade education, which granted was a few years more than most females had in that era; but to claim she was well educated, is not how most today would describe her.

This is still an interesting book to read, it has conflicting narratives, as most first person recollections would be in this situation. One of the survivors compares the unpreparedness of the Titanic crew to a German ship that he had been on which foundered. This is nice to have as a collection; if you can ignore the frustration of not having information on the survivors that are contributing, except what was given in their own accounts. It certainly would have been more interesting to have some history on them and what happened to them after this event.

I have read nearly everything ever written about the Titanic, but this book made me feel as if I were actually on the boat. It contains only first-hand, first-person accounts from survivors of the doomed Titanic. Some of the survivors began writing on the Carpathia, moments after they were plucked from the jaws of death. I expected the second half of the book, which deals with the inquiries that followed the disaster, to be more clinical in tone, but Maltin, who compiled the book, continues his focus on the real people as he finds them in the inquests. -Previous books have featured editing and intense study of the mechanics of the disaster. All have been interesting to some extent, and contributed to what is known, especially the recent scientific research and the "mosaic" put together by National Geographic. But the accounts presented in this book, directly from the mouths and minds of the people who went through it, are so vivid, one after the other, that as I was reading it I had the most vivid feeling that I was on the great ship. It's so nice to get away from the legends that have arisen over the last century, such as the overuse of the word "unsinkable": nothing beats Molly Brown writing in her own words, modest and matter-of-fact in her prose, and when you finish reading her story you want to stand up amid your goosebumps and applaud, but are afraid of tipping over the lifeboat. -Kudos to Maltin! Don't miss this one.

Yet another book about the Titanic based on (public domain) witness and testimony of survivors. The current price makes this an attractive deal, but traditionally a better and more useful choice for Titanic remembrance is Dover's THE STORY OF THE TITANIC AS TOLD BY ITS SURVIVORS, which has been in print since 1960. Most newer books with previously published testimony add very little.