A Night to Remember

On a April night in 1912, the liner RMS Titanic strikes an iceberg, and the people aboard have a few hours to understand what has happened and decide what to do. The book follows passengers, crew and officers through that time, from the moment of collision to the last minutes before the ship goes down.

Walter Lord reconstructs the disaster as non-fiction history. He builds it from interviews with survivors and from a close reading of official reports, so each scene rests on documented testimony rather than guesswork. The band playing on deck is one of the details the account covers.

The narrative moves between many people on different parts of the ship instead of staying with one central figure. Panic, confusion and hurried, desperate choices run through it, and the pressure builds as the liner sinks. The tone is factual and the pace is that of a unfolding emergency.

It suits readers interested in maritime history, and anyone who wants the real events behind one of the best-known disasters of the 20th century, set apart from the dramatized versions.