SOCIAL SCIENCES

Titanic

The Last Night of a Small Town
Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town. Oxford Univ. Mar. 2012. c.368p. illus. index. ISBN 9780199595570. $29.95. HIST
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Welshman (history, Lancaster Univ.; Churchill's Children) takes his title from a passage in Walter Lord's A Night To Remember and focuses on 12 survivor accounts. He aims to "build upon and challenge" Lord's book and "rebalance the narrative" away from men to women, etc., but in fact he uses many of Lord's sources, and in similar ways. And can the stories of just 12 people stand for a "small town"? The concluding chapters—one on the lives of the survivors after the sinking and another on the ship's relationship to the city of Belfast—are interesting.
VERDICT While this work doesn't entirely succeed in its stated purpose, and the lack of specific citations is frustrating, it is still a good read. Recommended to readers new to the subject. (Illustrations not seen.)
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