Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    A Night to Remember
    Unavailable
    A Night to Remember
    Unavailable
    A Night to Remember
    Audiobook5 hours

    A Night to Remember

    Written by Walter Lord

    Narrated by Richard Davidson

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    She was called "the ship that God himself couldn't sink," yet on her maiden voyage, the ship Titanic brushed an iceberg and sank less than three hours later, carrying 1,503 men, women, and children to their death. In this dramatic and historic recreation of the bravery and agony that marked that fateful night, author and historian Walter Lord paints a portrait of the last hours of the Titanic's first and final voyage.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books Audio
    Release dateSep 6, 1995
    ISBN9781461811244
    Unavailable
    A Night to Remember
    Author

    Walter Lord

    Walter Lord (1917–2002) was an acclaimed and bestselling author of literary nonfiction best known for his gripping and meticulously researched accounts of watershed historical events. His first book was The Fremantle Diary (1954), a volume of Civil War diaries that became a surprising success. But it was Lord’s next book, A Night to Remember (1955), that made him famous. Lord went on to use the book’s interview-heavy format as a template for most of his following works, which included detailed reconstructions of the Pearl Harbor attack in Day of Infamy (1957), the battle of Midway in Incredible Victory (1967), and the integration of the University of Mississippi in The Past That Would Not Die (1965).      

    More audiobooks from Walter Lord

    Related to A Night to Remember

    Related audiobooks

    Historical Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Unthinkable Sinkable Titanic Marked The End Of A Gilded Era

      Dec 3, 2019

      In “The Ship of Dreams,” Gareth Russell explores the excess and hubris that characterized the Edwardian age through the lives of six passengers.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Sailing In Style

      Jun 10, 2021

      Sailing In Style
      4 min read

    • Article

      From the Debris Field...

      Dec 30, 2017

      Wreck divers are invited to submit short pieces of timely information about a shipwreck in their area. Perhaps there is not enough information, or enough archival and/or underwater images, to submit it as a full-length article, so this From the Debri

      6 min read

    • Article

      Demystifying the Uluburun

      Nov 10, 2023

      Demystifying the Uluburun
      3 min read

    • Article

      Depths of understanding

      Jan 20, 2023

      Depths of understanding
      6 min read

    • Article

      Let’s Look At Titanic

      Mar 12, 2022

      Let’s Look At Titanic
      1 min read

    • Article

      Wake Of The Erebus

      Sep 18, 2020

      Wake Of The Erebus
      7 min read

    • Article

      WRECK Ommendations

      Feb 22, 2016

      Written by Richie Kohler with Charlie Hudson I am fortunate to be able to review many books about truly historical shipwrecks. Some are more exceptional than others. When our dear friend, Richie Kohler, presented his new book, Mystery of the Last Oly

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Volcano That Shrouded the Earth and Gave Birth to a Monster

      Oct 5, 2017

      Two hundred years ago, the greatest eruption in Earth’s recorded history took place. Mount Tambora—located on Sumbawa Island in the East Indies—blew itself up with apocalyptic force in April 1815. After perhaps 1,000 years’ dormancy, the devastating

      18 min read

    • Article

      The Volcano That Shrouded the Earth and Gave Birth to a Monster: Three years of darkness and cold spawned crime, poverty, and a literary masterpiece.

      Dec 31, 2015

      Two hundred years ago, the greatest eruption in Earth’s recorded history took place. Mount Tambora—located on Sumbawa Island in the East Indies—blew itself up with apocalyptic force in April 1815. After perhaps 1,000 years’ dormancy, the devastating

      18 min read

    • Article

      From Wrecks To Riches 2013

      Nov 19, 2020

      From Wrecks To Riches 2013
      1 min read

    • Article

      From the Debris Field...

      Jan 19, 2017

      In the late summer of 2016, Lake Superior’s most successful wreck hunters – Jerry Eliason, Ken Merryman, Kraig Smith, and Mike Stone (see Wreck Diving Magazine #31 for their discovery of the freighter, Henry B. Smith, deep in Lake Superior), found ye

      6 min read

    • Article

      Truth Or Myth?

      Jun 10, 2021

      Truth Or Myth?
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Emperor of Isle Royale

      Feb 22, 2020

      The Emperor of Isle Royale
      8 min read

    • Article

      Tragedy Of The atlantic

      Jan 26, 2022

      Tragedy Of The atlantic
      7 min read

    • Article

      From the Debris Field...

      Jun 30, 2017

      Wreck divers from everywhere on the planet are invited to submit newsy tidbits of timely information (also called “short, sharp, shipwreck shout-outs”) about a wreck in their area. Perhaps there is not enough information, or enough archival and/or un

      4 min read

    • Article

      This Week In History

      Apr 14, 2022

      This Week In History
      1 min read

    • Article

      A JOURNEY of ENDURANCE

      Jul 28, 2022

      A JOURNEY of ENDURANCE
      12 min read

    • Article

      Island Time: On The Poetics Of The Isle

      Apr 4, 2019

      Islands are almost always the geographic feature with which utopias are associated, for paradise is not paradise if it’s easily accessible. The post Island Time: On the Poetics of the Isle appeared first on The Millions.

      14 min read

    • Article

      Book Of The Month

      Feb 23, 2024

      RMS Queen Mary The World’s Favourite Liner David Ellery Published by Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorks S70 2AS 240 pages, hardbackediting@pen-and-sword.co.uk Price £40 Probably the most famous and certainly one of the bes

      3 min read

    • Article

      WRECKommendations

      May 22, 2018

      If We Make It ‘til Daylight The Story of Frank Mays As told to Pat and Jim Stayer and Tim Juhl Jim and Pat Stayer are very good friends of Wreck Diving Magazine and, for more than 34 years, have been underwater filmmakers, lecturers, presenters, and

      6 min read

    • Article

      From the Debris Fueld…

      Feb 22, 2020

      From the Debris Fueld…
      7 min read

    • Article

      From the Debris Fieldw….

      Aug 30, 2018

      Wreck divers are invited to submit short pieces of timely information about a shipwreck in their general area. Perhaps there is not enough information, or not enough archival and/or underwater images, to submit it as a full-length article, so this Fr

      7 min read

    • Article

      Letters To The Editor

      Feb 26, 2023

      I have recently noted your obituary to Bruce Askew in your November [2022] issue – great to see a tribute to Bruce. However, I would like to amend a few details. Stokes (originally Excalibur) was built in 1988 by Chris Sturrock who added another fram

      3 min read

    Reviews for A Night to Remember

    4/5

    503 ratings29 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      There are lots of Titanic books out there. This is one of the best.
    • 3/5
      Just went to see H&W shipyard in Belfast for the Titanic Experience. "You were there" reading.
    • 4/5
      This is perhaps the definitive account of the sinking of the Titanic. It was published in 1955 after a number of years in progress by the author as he interviewed and corresponded with as many survivors and families that he could. Rather than a historical fiction re-creation, this book is based on actual words spoken, testimony at hearings, letters and other documentation. Nothing is made up here. The 50th Ann edition has a nice introduction by author Nathan Philbrick which is informative to the casual Titanic fan. Walter Lord's own foreword, the deck drawings and all the data included at the end such as passenger lists for each class, are all interesting. I do wish there had been a few more drawings so one can better visualize the decks and room arrangements, but nowadays those things can be found rather easily on the internet.I liked this book. It is well written for the style, but does include minor details about various things to give one a sense of the times and the event. (I didn't really need to know all the variations of how people dressed for the disaster, yet these are things that the survivors apparently remembered in detail. More interesting were the things left behind.)You learn what happened and how the survivors were rescued. The rescue part including what could have happened and why it didn't is very interesting. One can easily see there should have been more survivors.It still seems unbelievable that this accident happened. I guess that is why people get obsessed with this.
    • 5/5
      An account of the sinking of the Titanic, based mainly on the recollections of the survivors. I really liked it that Lord didn't try to fictionalize or embellish the story. He did a good job of tying together the memories of survivors and families with newspaper and magazine articles, other books, and official documents. It focuses fairly tightly on the night of the disaster and the rescue, with only a few references to official inquiries and the later lives of some survivors. Even though I've always been aware of the facts, this account really made me aware of the appalling lack of preparedness. There were only enough lifeboats for about half the number of people on board, and even those were grossly underfilled when they were launched. The book provided me with plenty of tidbits of information to inflict upon my family.
    • 5/5
      on Sunday, December 23, 2007 I wrote:


      Wow. I was again on the verge of tears. This is such a sad story.Very well written. After I read it I immediately wanted to watch The Titanic. I thought I had the movie, but guess I was wrong. ;)Now I know what to buy next.
    • 4/5
      A non-fiction book on the true events of the sinking and final hours of the Titanic. Well researched and compiled, this may have been the primary basis of other Titanic stories ever made.
    • 4/5
      I picked this book up for the Kindle on 4/13/12 during the Kindle Daily Deal. I had never read a book about the Titanic before and as this had gotten great reviews and it was the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking I thought that it was a good time to change that.I found this book engaging, engrossing, gripping and simply fascinating! It was a well written and, from what I could tell, thorough account of that night. I felt connected to the passengers and crew that were on the Titanic during this horrific time. One of the things I liked best about this book is that there weren't liberties taken, drama wasn't added to make the book more exciting. This was simply the story of the Titanic's last night. I felt that Lord also did a good job of discussing the social expectations at play when the Titanic sunk and how they were changed as a result of that tragedy.I would not hesitate to recommend this book to anyone interested in the story of the Titanic.
    • 4/5
      This is a fairly comprehensive book detailing the passengers on board the Titanic. It describes events from multiple points of view, including staff and steerage. I thought that the book was well and very factual. At times it did feel like the author was throwing out a lot of names. At times it was hard to follow and keep track of the variety of people. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone looking to learn more about the Titanic or a history buff.
    • 5/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed this factual, succinct narrative of the sinking of the Titanic. You get a real sense of how the tragedy happened, the main players in the drama and the role each played during that fateful night. Meticulous research including interviewing the survivors by this author, who still manages to write a book that is easy to read as well as riveting. Well recommended to anyone interested in this maritime disaster.
    • 4/5
      The best book for Titanic buffs.
    • 4/5
      It was better the first time around but it is suspenseful even though you know the outcome. Worth a detour.
    • 5/5
      This book was fascinating - I loved all the little details, from what people wore to the squabbles on the life boats. Lord makes clear that the great loss of life was especially horrific because it didn't need to happen. Not only were there not enough life boats, but a ship was only ten miles away, and did not have anyone at the radio to hear the distress calls from the Titanic. Note to self: No more books or movies about the Titanic. The ending will always be the same!
    • 5/5
      It doesn't get more thorough than this- Lord interviewed just about any Titanic survivor still alive in the early 50's, which was quite a few. This is a minute-by-minute account of what happened aboard the Titanic before, during and after its sinking. I don't think you'd find another book that places the reader there as much as this one.
    • 2/5
      This book is about the night the ship the Titanic sank. The book refers to specific accounts given by certain people on the ship, ranging from the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich. I honestly did not care for the book, partially because I was forced to read the book so I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd like to. But I did find many of the accounts very interesting and shocking.
    • 3/5
      A concise but interesting story of the sinking of the Titanic. Written in 1955, it contains a lot of conjecture, but is a accurate description of what actually happened. This is a history, not a novelization.
    • 3/5
      Six-word review: Chilling chronicle of unimaginable maritime catastrophe.Extended review:In our time, a number of landmark events have been cited as turning points, the end of innocence, the time when doubt and cynicism took the place of optimism and faith. The bombing of Hiroshima. The assassination of President Kennedy. The attacks of 9/11.Before that, there was the Titanic.Says Walter Lord in this work of nonfiction: "Overriding everything else, the Titanic also marked the end of a general feeling of confidence. Until then men felt they had found the answer to a steady, orderly, civilized life.... The Titanic woke them up. Never again would they be quite so sure of themselves. In technology especially, the disaster was a terrible blow. Here was the "unsinkable ship"--perhaps man's greatest engineering achievement--going down the first time it sailed.... If it was a lesson, it worked--people have never been sure of anything since. The unending sequence of disillusionment that has followed can't be blamed on the Titanic, but she was the first jar. Before the Titanic, all was quiet. Afterward all was tumult. That is why, to anybody who lived at the time, the Titanic more than any other single event marks the end of the old days, and the beginning of a new, uneasy era." (chapter 7)The next big event would be the start of World War I.Born five years after the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, Lord was writing in 1955. After two world wars. Before Sputnik, before Apollo, before home computers and cellphones. Before Vietnam, before JFK. Before Unabomber and TSA and amber alerts. When CD stood for Civil Defense, not certificate of deposit and not compact disc, and we practiced "duck and cover" under our desks at school. However it may look now, that was no age of innocence. At the time of publication, only 43 years had passed since that April night, and the sinking of the greatest of all ships was still a living memory. And Lord, looking back over the interval and reflecting the spirit of the time, sees the loss of the Titanic as the boundary marker. That, it seems to me, is one of the three main messages of this book.The other two are directly related to the disaster itself and not its aftermath. One is the number of things that had to go wrong in order for the vessel and 1500 lives to be lost. And every one of them--messages not delivered, warnings not taken, lifeboats not filled--everything did. And the other is the overweening hubris of the designers, builders, and owners themselves, those who thought they could create something indestructible. Nothing is indestructible.Lord's documentary chronicles the events immediately leading up to the Titanic's collision with the iceberg and everything that occurred thereafter, through the arrival of the few hundred survivors in New York. Key moments in the sequence are laid out in a timeline, minute by minute. Public and private accounts of the catastrophe are catalogued.The main thread of the narrative is actually many interwoven threads. Lord follows the stories of various passengers, crew members, and distinguished personages, including the captain, the naval architect who oversaw the plans for the ocean liner, and the managing director of the Titanic's parent company, the White Star Line. Some are barely sketches, and some are detailed vignettes with extensive chronologies. Source material included written records and numerous eyewitness accounts, among which there was much conflicting information. The author went to considerable lengths to try to separate fiction, false memory, and folklore from fact, acknowledging that with no way to verify stories there could never be more than partial success. Lord's journalistic style keeps the account from veering over into sensationalism, but it's impossible to tell a story as dramatic as this one without some feeling. As Lord depicts the overconfidence, ill-preparedness, disbelief, denial, and fatal inaction that contributed to the tragedy, he expresses a sorrow that seems both universal and personal. There is also admiration, awe, and perhaps even pride as he recounts the noble acts, the honorable behavior, and the self-sacrificing strength of character to which so many of the survivors owed their lives.I prefer my history straight and not served up as infotainment, so I appreciate the amount of objectivity that Lord brings to the task, as well as the conscientious research. At the same time, the very things that make this a faithful history also take off a few points for readability: the quantities of corroborating detail, the occasional choppiness, the inevitable loose ends and unfinished stories. The book is worth a reader's attention, however, not just because, a century after the fact, that night to remember ought not to be overshadowed and forgotten but also because the lessons of the Titanic and its disastrous fate are just as applicable today. Innocence may have been lost a long time ago, but we have not learned to avoid the trap of overconfidence or truly come to terms with our collective vulnerability.I dread to think what it would take.An interesting footnote comes from Wikipedia: "In 1997, Lord served as a consultant to director James Cameron during the filming of the movie Titanic."(Kindle edition)
    • 5/5
      This is a superb account of the last hours of the Titanic. The author doesn't overwhelm the reader with facts, but succinctly tells of this tragedy through the eyes of the survivors. I found myself turning the pages eagerly, wanting to see how it ended, and who would survive. The stories of courage and self-sacrifice touched me. Excellent read, sobering.
    • 5/5
      The illustrations are icing on a fine book's cake. Reads like a novel. Unputdownable.
    • 5/5
      A FANTASTIC read. Walter Lord captures the tale of the ill-fated ocean liner the Titanic in this gripping tale. Once you pick up this book you'll never want to put it down.
    • 5/5
      Very nearly a primary source. Lord wrote this at a time when many of the survivors were still surviving! It is as complete a picture of events happening everywhere from the bridge to steerage as is probably possible. I found the passenger list at the end of the book especially helpful. The difference in the font tells the tale of survival or death. I looked up every name as it came up in the narrative to see what that person's ultimate fate would be.
    • 3/5
      Often considered the definitive memoir of the sinking of the Titanic. It has a number of the accounts that made it into the movie, including the seemingly incredible survival of a passenger who simply stepped off the back of the ship as it sank.
    • 5/5
      Short and sweet, and riveting...and that made it the perfect book about the titanic sinking.Excellent narrator
    • 4/5
      An interesting account of the night the Titanic sank. Lord is no Simon Winchester, but it's still a fairly engaging historical narrative.
    • 3/5
      The audiobook is good but has passages missing. Please fix.
    • 4/5
      The full story, as it was known then. Not sugar coated or layered in a fake romantic plot. The full terrifying story of the horrible night the Titanic (spoiler alert!) sank.
      The class distinctions and the morals of the people involved are on full display and Lord also really makes a good case that the sinking of the Titanic was not just an event, but a turning point in history that marked a major change in the way people viewed technology and was a milestone in the industrial revolution.
    • 5/5
      Book on CD read by Walter JarvisOn April 15, 1912, the greatest ship to ever sail struck an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic. This is a chronological tale of what the people aboard the Titanic recall of that night’s events. This is a re-read. I first read it before I joined either Shelfari or Goodreads, so I have no record of when I read it. I believe it was in the 1980s; I know it was long before the hugely successful movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. If memory serves, I re-read it at about the time the movie was released. So this is my third reading.It’s a gripping story, and Lord does a great job of bringing all these people to life. I get a real sense of the confusion and disbelief when the ship first strikes the iceberg. And later, of the chaos and panic when it is clear she will go down, and there are not enough lifeboats for everyone aboard to safely get away. Lord used transcripts of testimony given by many people during the inquiry following the disaster, as well as personal interviews with survivors and relatives of those lost at sea, as well as people who were aboard the Carpathia which picked up all the lifeboats and returned with them to New York. The text edition I had included some photographs, as well as a full list of the passengers.Walter Jarvis does an okay job of reading the audio version, but I really disliked his voice. Still, he did convey a sense of urgency as he related the events of that horrible night.
    • 5/5
      Intense. This book holds such a disaster in awe that it’s not easy to leave off the book without finishing it. I couldn’t put it down once I picked it up. Very brisk, informative and easy language. A good telling. Walter Lord does well with the huge amount of information researched. A good writer mans a good research to story funnel. Lord is stellar at this. Deceptively not short. Enough to make you understand that magnitude of the whole thing. Now one of my favorite books, morbidly so.
    • 4/5
      The introduction by Nathaniel Philbreck called this book "the definitive account" of the Titanic disaster, particularly since at the time this book was published (1955) many of the survivors were still alive, and Lord had the opportunity to interview over 60 of them--not something future books will be able to boast. The book is a work, as Philbreck put it, of "narrative non-fiction"--but not, and I appreciate that, a work of "creative non-fiction." Lord in his minute-by-minute of Titanic's last hours pieces together the story using multiple viewpoints--but he never steps over the line into relating things he couldn't have pierced together from the eye-witnesses. I also appreciate how in the last chapter he goes over the conflicting reports and discrepancies (not even how many were lost can be nailed down, although Lord things 1,502 dead is the most accurate number.)Most readers are likely to know many of the details and recognize the names of people involved from the popular films and many documentary programs. On an April night in 1912 the "unsinkable" ship sunk less than two hours after hitting an iceberg. There weren't enough life boats for all the 2,207 passengers and crew. Few among those who went into the below freezing waters of the North Atlantic survived to be picked up by the Carpathia that came to the rescue a couple of hours after the ship went down. There are a lot of striking individual stories of heroism and cowardice, chivalry and ignobility. Reading this reminded me of what Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist, said of his experiences in a concentration camp. He said Freud was wrong that people under stress act the same--Frankly said that rather their individual character, for bad and good, is just magnified. It's also quite a picture of a lost age. As Lord put it, "the Titanic was also the last stand of wealth and society in the center of public affection. In 1912 there were no movie, radio or television stars; sports figures were still beyond the pale; and cafe society was completely unknown. The public depended on socially prominent people for all the vicarious glamour that enriches drab lives.” Never again would those in the different classes of travel be treated differently in such a situation--yet back then not even the steerage passengers were outraged over how they were, if not pushed to the side by policy, then not just a second thought, but last. Mostly yes, it was "women and children first." But you still had a better chance of surviving if you were a first class male than a third class child--and Lord explains why.
    • 4/5
      True story of the sinking of the Titanic, which sank in 1912. Makes the people come alive and shows cowardice and heroism among the passengers.