Customer Reviews

A Night to Remember: The Classic Account of the Final Hours of the Titanic

5 star:		(98)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a rather short, but enthralling account of the Titanic voyage, from the day of the disaster to the arrival of the Carpathia in New-York's harbour. No messing around with long prologue or introduction.

The author put the story together from several witness, and drew a full portrait of the sinking of the Titanic. No need for me here to recount the story, but 2 facts litteraly blew my mind off; first, only one out of 14 lifeboats went back to look for survivors, primarly because the women in those lifeboats refused to put themselves in any danger. Knowing that many if not all of those women left husbands or adolescents on the Titanic to drown and freeze to death, this is rather horrible.

Secondly, even if the motto was "Women and children first", more first-class male passengers were saved than 3rd class babies or children. Equally horrible.

Even if you'll come across many unselfish heroics deeds told in the book's pages, those 2 gruesomes events was what got my attention.

When I read it in my youth, it was the German translation, ('Die letzte Nacht der Titanic') and I found it so compelling, that felt I was part of the action. Now, many years later, I reread it in English. No matter in what language, it is still the classic account of what happened that night: No overblown hype, no laboured speculations, just a skillful collage of what the author learned from survivors and from his own research about the ship and tragedy, all written in a fresh journalistic style that draws you into the story.

Very well written, consise, and descriptive portrait of the sinking of the Titanic and what those involved experienced.

This is the story of the "unsinkable" Titanic. She was four city blocks long, with the latest, most ingenious safety devices, a French "sidewalk cafe", private promenade decks-but only twenty lifeboats for the 2,207 passengers and crew on board.

Gliding through a calm sea, disdainful of all obstacles, the Titanic brushed an iceberg. Two hours and forty minutes later, she upended and sank. Only 705 survivors were picked up from her half-filled boats. And she had been called "the ship that God Himself couldn't sink."

A Night to Remember is a minute-by-minute account of her fatal collision with an iceberg and how the resulting tragedy brought out the best and worst in human nature. Some gave their lives for others, some fought for survival. Wives beseeched husbands to join them in the boats; gentlemen went taut-lipped to their deaths in full evening dress; hundreds of steerage passengers, trapped below decks, sought help in vain.

If you've seen the movie by James Cameron, this book is highly recommended to get the real story.

The grand-daddy of all Titanic books, and still one of the best. Much has been written and updated since this book was written in 1955, but it still holds its place as the one that started the interest in the grand old ship, and her tragic fate. Just the starting point for anyone interested in the Titanic...

Even with the amount of time I've been studying the "Titanic" legend, I still discovered a few new things about the disaster that I didn't know. You won't find a more detailed account anywhere else!

I have received Walter lord's book "A night to remember" and the movie, two weeks ago, since then I have read the book two times and seen the movie three times ! This book is the one and only book you'll ever need to buy to have all the real facts and details about that terrible night.
YOU WILL NOT REGET BUYING THIS BOOK !!

For those of you who are Titanic aficionados, practically everything you will have read or seen about the incident probably used this book as a major reference. Which makes it the Titanic Bible. No, we don't get the love story, but there is enough here to make your emotions work the way they're supposed to.

While there are other studies, what makes this one valuable is that the author interviewed over sixty survivors for the work. This is obviously a feat that can never be duplicated again, so we need to thank Walter Lord for getting the information while we can.

So we get the statistics of the ship, which are interesting. We also get to know the changes made to sea travel, and society in general due to the incident. But we also get what have now become the famous "What ifs?". There are almost a dozen things, from ship construction to someone merely taking a telegram more seriously, where, if just were to go the other way, it's very possible that nearly everybody could have been rescued. This is essential reading for those interested in the topic.

I read the book " A Night To Remember". I thought it was a very good book for everyone. It was very interesting and touching. Walter Lord wrote the novel very realistic. It told what happened step by step each minute.
The passengers had to feel very scared. All they could think about was what their family members were doing in the other places on the boat. I could never imagine that.
The book tells you what happen and what the passengers felt when it was happening.
They could only think about how they were going to die too. They could only start thinking about touching the freezing water and freezing to death or drowning in the water.
They were out in the middle of nowhere and had no chance to really survive. The men let the wives and children go on the lifeboats first and then the husbands would get on lifeboats after everyone was off the ship. The wives and children could only think about where their grandpas or fathers were. They would never probably see them again in their lifetime. The fathers and grandpas and uncles would probably not survive the accident because it took so long just to get the wives and children on to the lifeboats.
While everything was happening, some people were in their beds just wanting to die that way, some were drinking as usual in the diner and some were just trying to survive. A lot of the passengers didn't even want to think of the way they were going to pass away.
I thought the novel was very good. I could feel what was happening as I read the story. It was very sad to read about how people felt and what they were thinking. The Titanic was one of the greatest ships ever and took so many lives in so little time. I could never imagine that happening. I don't know what I would think about if I had been on that ship. I think this novel is good for anyone that would like to read a good story.

This piece of literature lends not only an atmospheric minute-by-minute account of a famous disaster, it presents the reader with insightful,well-thought-out points about society at the time. A lot of people look back on the tragedy as a horrible accident that claimed hundreds of innocent lives. But Walter Lord gives us the idea that more than lives were just lost, a way of life was lost. He mentions the "gentlemen" lost at sea, who at that point in time, made up a large percentage of those in the society who were chivalrous and extraordinarily polite, nothing at all like social discourse today. Those members of that large portion of society were lost, and a whole group that consisted of the lower and upper class alike were erased, and a way of interaction disappeared along with it.