Garrison, Webb. A Treasury of Titanic Tales. 1st printing. Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press. 1998. wraps. isbn: 1558536582. scarcity: fairly common.

This book is billed as a collection of human interest stories, and insights into the doomed ship. The book delivers on this promise, but narrowly, as it focuses primarily on the ‘important’ people on board, i.e. the wealthy, first class passengers. There are chapters about Gracie, Butt, Astor, the Strauses, Widener, Guggenheim, Brown, Ismay, Morgan, and a few others from the first cabin. Prominent members of the crew also get some attention, like the wireless operators and the bridge officers, but the rest of the crew and passengers are pretty much ignored.

The stories that are here are interesting and readable, but they suffer from a fair number of errors. What is surprising is that most of these errors are ‘amateur mistakes’, and by that I mean errors that even people who have only moderate knowledge about the Titanic disaster should not have made. To site just one glaring example, the author states that Titanic was carrying slightly more than a full load of passengers (p49), when it is common knowledge that the ship was barely half full.

Despite the errors, the book is a pleasant read. Readers who know their Titanic history well can gloss over the mistakes and enjoy the focus on the ship’s wealthy passengers. Those less knowledgeable though, should not depend on this title as a source for the facts.