The Other Side of the Night

July 15, 2009
Intended as a kind of companion to Walter Lord's "A Night to Remember" and "The Night Lives On", Butler ("Unsinkable: The Full Story of RMS Titanic") rehashes the story of the "Titanic", focusing here on the rescue ship "Carpathia" and the "Californian", the nearby ship that ignored distress signals. While there are engaging passages in this book, many are lifted without attribution from other works; there is also an accumulation of easily avoidable factual errors. There is a bibliography, but no source notes; thus, the book is useless to those wishing to undertake further research. Butler's "Author's Note" acknowledges his debt to Lord, which seems the least he could do considering the amount of material he borrows from him without credit. Butler expresses his disdain for revisionist historians, yet doesn't seem to mind presenting as fact several peculiar theories, including the speculative psychiatric diagnosis that the captain of the "Californian" was a "sociopath." VERDICT Some ship buffs dismiss as "rivet-counters" those they consider obsessed with minutiae; this author would have done well to count a few more rivets. Not recommended. Any library would be much better served by Lord's books and Donald Lynch (text) and Ken Marschall's (illustrations) "Titanic: An Illustrated History".Megan Hahn Fraser, UCLA Lib.

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