“Brilliantly lit from stem to stern, she looked like a sagging birthday cake.”

With all due respect to Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, my infatuation with RMS Titanic begins and ends with Walter Lord. Written some forty three years after the infamous disaster, Lord’s accounting is thorough and (no pun intended) deeply engaging.

I was struck by the appalling level of class favoritism when it came time for Titanic’s compliment of 2,229 to abandon ship. The chivalrous cry of “Women and children first!” held true only if you were rich and affluent. Of the 54 children that perished, 53 were steerage passengers. Lord points out that, statistically speaking, a man with a first or second class ticket had a better chance of survival than an infant with a third class berth.

As heartbreaking as this book was, I found I couldn’t put it down. I even read all the endnotes and acknowledgments—something I very rarely do. I just didn’t want to let it go. 5 stars.