The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Titanic

by Jay Stevenson

Against the backdrop of the basic scenario, this text discusses the details of the actual story of the Titanic. It suggests that little things seem to mean a lot as a result of being part of one of the biggest tragedies of the century.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0028627121
• ISBN13: 9780028627120
• Release Date: June 1998
• Publisher: Alpha Books
• Length: 330 Pages
• Weight: 1.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.3" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Engrossing

There is so much information in this book, you'll be amazed! I love books on Titanic,and this book has so much about it.

A terrific ready reference but needs a slight updating.

For those who do not need love stories or socialogical studies, this is a terrific reference book. It is touted as trivia, but it is much more than that. It is also very accurate except for the final analysis of iceberg vs. rivets. For years I never believed that the iceberg ripped a gash in the ship like a knife. That could not happen simply because ice is much, much softer and much, much more brittle than one-inch thick steel plates. But the iceberg is massive, several times heavier than the ship. So it was just a matter of weight that pushed the shell plating in and ripping open rivet seams like zippers. This book addresses some of those findings and misses the final analysis by only a split hair when it mentions the possibility of inferior iron in the rivets. In fact, William Garzke of Gibbs and Cox (see his and Dunlin's books on Battleships) analyzed the few rivets that were recovered from Titanic and found them to be highly contaminated with carbon inclusions. It is apparent then that rather than being forged from high quality steel bar stock (as the High Tensile Steel rivets were for American warships) the rivets were quickly cast in multiple molds for fast production. The reheating and driving of the rivets did not restructure the grains of the alloy to give the shank maximum resistance against shear as a forged rivet would. Hopefully the next printing of the book will include this finding.

A Good Book for Titanic Fun Facts

This book has the basic facts about Titanic, but it also has some really cool facts about the ship and the people on it. It's a great reference book if you need to look up a fact, instead of trying to read every single detail about the ship in a big book. (I've tried it) But if you do want a more detailed book look some where else. My favorite things about this book are- The appendixes, the good layout, and all the weird facts (I like the chapter Deep Prophicies)

Easy to Read & Nicely Sectioned

It's not hard to see all the mistakes in this book, because I had been reading about Titanic (along with a few other wrecks) for the last 16 years. It's not quite proper to see the cartoonish characters on just about every page, but it seems to be "The Complete Idiot's Guide" series' style and trademark. I hate to see those mistakes in there, but nonetheless, it is a pretty "complete guide" to this grand dame named Titanic. It's filled with vast information divided in small sections that reading it is not hard at all.

Great book with awsone information.

I am a Titanic-historian in training. I thought I knew everthing, but I found I was wrong. There were so many new facts I had no idea about. I loved the side info such as the diffinitions. I also loved the appendixs that gave the passanger list, crew list, and the cargo list. I thought that was SO AWSOME!!!!!!! Gave me a lot of info for my website.