Yes, another book about the sinking of the Titanic. However, Hugh Brewster's Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage is much more than the story of the world's most famously doomed passenger line. What Brewster does so well here is recreate the world, circa 1912. In particular, Brewster illustrates for the reader time and again how small the world was one hundred years ago and how interconnected the lives, loves, and business dealings of the ship's richest passengers were.
Brewster painstakingly profiles such notable passengers as such business elite as John Jacob Astor, Isidor and Ida Straus, and Benjamin Guggenheim;
President Taft's closest aide, Major Archibald Butt; future Olympic gold medalist Norris Williams; tennis champion Karl Behr (Williams's future Davis Cup partner); artist Frank Millet; actress Dorothy Gibson (the "prettiest girl"); the famed dress maker Lady Duff Gordon; and, of course, the Unsinkable Molly Brown. In Brewster's richly crafted history, readers see the events of the Titanic, as well as the larger world, through the eyes and correspondence of these individuals.
Although the individual portraits are excellent, Brewster is perhaps at his finest in describing the sinking of the great ship. He makes clear from the beginning how chaos reigned; how completely and utterly unprepared the entire ship's company was for such a disaster. The first lifeboats went off with a mere handful of passengers - men and women - and those had to be begged, and some quite literally dragged, aboard. Most believed they were going for a pleasure cruise and would return to the ship in the morning. It is certainly true that there were not enough lifeboats, but there were also not enough people willing to enter them, at least until the window for doing so was past.
Overall, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage is an excellent recounting of the Titanic, her passengers, and her era. Four stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment