This is a collection of contemporary accounts about the disaster as described by survivors and the world press. It certainly is mammoth in volume with over 525 pages of text. That is a massive compilation of survivor accounts. If you are looking for an illustrated book, however, this one is not for you, as there are no illustrations besides what is on the front cover.

Tibballs is billed as the editor, but compiler more closely describes what he actually did, and therein lies one of the book’s big weaknesses. The rear cover proclaims that “...... nothing could be as graphic or revealing as the recorded accounts of the eyewitnesses, those who were actually there”. The problem is that almost all of the accounts recorded in this book were excerpted from newspaper articles, and though it is true they were often revealing, more often than not they were just plain graphic.

The newspaper accounts of the disaster suffer from two serious flaws. Firstly, many of the survivor’s accounts were taken completely at face value. Reporters made no attempt to first determine their accuracy before rushing them off to press. Some accounts were from cautious and careful observers, yet many other people based their accounts on hearsay, stated speculation as if it were fact, or were prone to exaggeration. Sometimes survivors gave an accurate account of what they thought they saw, but they were just plain wrong.

Secondly and more seriously, some of these survivor’s descriptions were “augmented” by the reporters themselves to make the stories more lurid. The end result is that there is a tremendous amount of misinformation in the newspaper articles, and it is often difficult to tell true events from completely fictitious ones. This would have been a much stronger book if the author had edited the content with commentary separating fact from fantasy.

Unfortunately he doesn’t. As a result, readers who don’t know the story well are not going to get a very accurate view of what really happened. If you are well versed in the story of the disaster, however, reading this book is a fascinating look at how the people who were there perceived the event, with all the resulting mishmash of truth and fiction.

Note that some new book sites on the web list the title, incorrectly, as The Mammoth Book of the Titanic (that is the title of the American edition).

With thanks to Randy Bigham for posting information about this book on ET.

This is a good, brisk retelling of the Titanic story from the initial dinner between Ismay & Pirrie in 1907 thru the filming of James Cameron’s movie in 1996. As you can see, the author covers quite a lot of ground in this book’s short 128 pages.

There’s nothing new here, but for a fairly comprehensive overview of the entire Titanic saga it does a rather good job.

First Australian edition by Sydney: Reader’s Digest, 1997, wraps, isbn#086449100X.