Shadow of the Titanic: The Extraordinary Stories of Those Who Survived Paperback – March 26, 2013

I have read countless books about the TITANIC so I was excited about the "other story" of the Titanic. What became of the survivors? Most books end with the sinking and subsequent US and British hearings into the tragedy. The survivors then become a forgotten sideline to history...the exception being the very last handful of survivors who were babies or young children during the sinking and became the final tangible link to the tragedy.SHADOW OF THE TITANTIC was totally engrossing. Here are many of the survivors I remembered from other books but now we see what became of their lives. No one who survived the sinking went on to live a "normal" life. The dreaful memories of the sinking and loss of life stayed with survivors for the rest of their lives. They lost parents, husbands, friends and loved ones. Life could never be the same for any of them.It was amazing to read about several survivors who were so tormented by the disaster that they committed suicide...some within a few years of their survival while others suffered for decades before ending their lives.I had always wondered what happened to teenager Madeline Astor. Her marriage to a much older John Jacob Astor scandalized high society. They went abroad to escape the gossip. Their return home on the Titanic met with disaster and the pregnant Madeline was not a teenaged millionaire widow. Oddly, Astor's will stipulated that she would lose her inheritance if she remarried..and yes, she did and more than once. Here are fascinating stories into the lives and misadventures of the survivors.Despite the valor of "Women and Children First", we learn that in many cases it was "Women and Children ONLY". Men were refused spots with their wives and children as lifeboats were lowered with many seats available. If a first-class male passenger did find a seat on a lifeboat, he was often considered a coward and forever scorned by high society. It seemed the duty of Edwardian gentlemen to go down with the ship no matter what.We also hear again about women who refused to turn back half-empty lifeboats to try to rescue more people. Where is the valor there?There is also Dorothy Gibson, a popular silent film actress, who survived the ship and starred in the first film version of the Titanic a month after the sinking. Her life took a strange journey that even involved a stay in a concentration camp in Italy during WWII.We learn how the lives of children too young to remember the sinking were forever affected by being a "survivor". The subject of the Titanic was often taboo in many survivor households.SHADOW OF THE TITANIC is an engrossing story and a must read for anyone fascinated by this doomed luxury liner. Finally, here is a chance to read about the other side of the story.

I have always been interested in the Titanic, however I have not read many books on the subject. When I hear the word "Titanic" I instantly picture in my mind the physical ship itself; the luxurious first class accommodations, the band playing while the ship was sinking, the lifeboats being lowered away, etc. For a long time I had ignored what made the story of the Titanic so compelling and unique; the passengers themselves on the ship's maiden (and only) voyage. Andrew Wilson's "Shadow of the Titanic: The Extraordinary Stories of Those Who Survived" is just that; a collection of extraordinary stories of a select number of people who survived the sinking of the Titanic.Andrew Wilson truly did an outstanding job in research for this book. I really enjoyed his writing style. The way that he told the stories of the survivors made it hard for me to put this book down. There were no reviews for this book at the time that I ordered it, as it was released in early March of this year. As a result, I was skeptical. I'm so happy that I trusted my instincts and decided to order it anyway. Although I haven't read a lot of books pertaining to the Titanic, I would not give a moment of hesitation to say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and will probably read select chapters in the book over again in the future. I was especially interested in the extraordinary stories of Edith Rosenbaum, Renee Harris, John Jacob Astor IV and his eighteen-year-old bride, Madeleine Force Astor, Sir Cosmo and Lady Duff Gordon, Bruce Ismay and Dorothy Gibson, just to name a handful of the interesting people discussed throughout the pages and chapters in this compelling and utterly fascinating book.I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the Titanic or even for those who would be interested in learning more about people living in America's Gilded Age and England's Edwardian Era.

I am interested in knowing more about historical events and being a little familiar with the Titanic sinking from a couple of movies I was curious when I saw the Kindle version of this book on Amazon for a very reasonable price. I found this book to be well researched with good annotations by Andrew Wilson so I felt secure that the stories of the survivors were fact based. There were some sections in the stories of the survivors where there were fewer annotations, I admit to wondering about these sections and in the end assumed that he wrote these sections using what he had read about the survivor in questions.As expected, I found the book somewhat intense and depressing at times. Yet, I understand that many survivors were traumatized and I felt it important that I read the entire book to get to know the different experiences of the survivors.For reasons that are little hard to explain, I gave the book a four star rating.