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A review by jdubbs8791
On a Sea of Glass: The Life & Loss of the RMS Titanic by J. Kent Layton, Tad Fitch, Bill Wormstedt
5.0
This book is a beast! The authors have painstakingly taken what feels like ALL the witness accounts and most of the credible research and written it as an almost narrative chronology.
It is DENSE with information, small type and two columns per page. I usually absorb Titanic books - even large ones - quickly, but not this one.
Easily the most definitive tome it does focus on the building, sinking, and aftermath but not the discovery. As such, some major controversies, such as the Californian affair are given relatively cursory attention in sidebars and appendices, but the authors are clear as to why, and I accept the explanations.
A couple small complaints:
1- it lacks a survivor list, so as I weeded through several chapters with hundreds of quotes and experiences, I kept wondering which of them survived and had to cross reference with another book.
2- end notes suck. They're fine if they're serving as citations, and some of these do, but just as many are further details and finer points of text material. I understand that to put them as footnotes would change the page layout and lengthen the book, but flipping back and forth on nearly every page is difficult, especially on this giant text.
It is DENSE with information, small type and two columns per page. I usually absorb Titanic books - even large ones - quickly, but not this one.
Easily the most definitive tome it does focus on the building, sinking, and aftermath but not the discovery. As such, some major controversies, such as the Californian affair are given relatively cursory attention in sidebars and appendices, but the authors are clear as to why, and I accept the explanations.
A couple small complaints:
1- it lacks a survivor list, so as I weeded through several chapters with hundreds of quotes and experiences, I kept wondering which of them survived and had to cross reference with another book.
2- end notes suck. They're fine if they're serving as citations, and some of these do, but just as many are further details and finer points of text material. I understand that to put them as footnotes would change the page layout and lengthen the book, but flipping back and forth on nearly every page is difficult, especially on this giant text.