Customer Reviews

Her Name, Titanic

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Because many of the stories Pellegrino told appeared in no other books, including the British and American Inquiries into the sinking, I and other Titanic Historical Society members bought into the widely-voiced notion that Pellegrino's facts were "all made up." As it turns out, he and Walter Lord have over the years assembled an entire library of unpublished expedition logs and survivors' accounts, the full contents of which were recently reproduced for THS and Earthship tv. Referring to the accounts as "a real eye-opener," THS historian Don Lynch, who recently sailed with Pellegrino on James Cameron's 3-D Imax filming expedition to the Titanic, found the author to be a true seeker, blessed with hyper-energy and an undying sense of wonder that makes him seem at times like an overgrown child, "if not occasionally like a class 1-A pain in the neck... but a lovable pain in the neck". As for the availability of the library, Pellegrino has begun to post it on his web site, fully annotated, and downloadable by an "honor system" by which readers will hopefully send donations to the Michael J. Fox organization for Parkinson's disease research (where Fox makes sure that every dime goes directly to research). This tells me everything I need to know about Pellegrino and the Titanic.

I have noticed that Paul Quinn's excellent books have been sharply criticized as being based on no new information. Nevermind that he is one of the few people who really does the hard and much required work of studying the details of the British and American inquiries into the loss of the Titanic. Then, when Pellegrino comes along with books based on actual expedition research combined with nearly a half century of unpublished letters and collected diaries - the collection being the life's work of Walter Lord (one of America's most respected historians) - these same Quinn critics attack Pellegrino specifically because he presents information they have not read before. They claim, without investigating any further, that because it's not in the British or American inquiries it must be all made up. So you're damned if you do present new information, damned if you don't. It seems to me that new writers on the subject of Titanic just can't win for losing.

When I wrote to Pellegrino for information on Titanic survivors Edith Russell and Alfred White, he sent me copies of letters and memoirs. This does not seem to me like someone who is "making it all up." The stories may seem unbelievable, but that is precisely why the titanic stirs so many emotions. It is, as Pellegrino writes, "all the wondrous horror of a Greek tragedy penned by God with Shakespeare as his muse."

This is the first book since "A Night to Remember" that actually carries you back through time to the decks of the sinking Titanic until you actually feel it yourself. You feel the emotions of the people that night - and then you are yanked forward in time to the expeditions that first discovered and explored the Titanic, and then Pellegrino moves you back and forth in time again and again from the night of the sinking to the expeditions until at last you become, like James Cameron's Rose, unstuck in time. It is easy to see how Cameron was so moved by Pellegrino's morphings through time. A reading of this scientist's other books reveals that he seems to be unable to tell a tale in linear fashion. In both "Unearthing Atlantis" and "Ghosts of the Titanic," he unfolds archaeological investigations by telling the whole history backwards! It is difficult to imagine what he will do with time next. But I'll be there for the ride. You can bet on it.

This unique and fascinating book goes beyond any TITANIC bookthat has ever been written. It is perhaps the most dramatic account of the sinking of the legendary "unsinkable" Cunard liner -- and of the incredible, science fiction-like finding of the ship.

"As ropes were unhooked and boat number fourteen struck out, portholes still glowed below the surface. From five feet under, in a room that was still unflooded, a man was peering out into the ocean. Adjacent portholes illumunated the white bottom of a lifeboat. Looking up, he watched it cast away..."

Time seemed to have come unstuck the day the TITANIC's grave was discovered. An empty lifeboat davit turned up on the robot ARGO's tv screens, and suddenly it was 1912 again, suddenly the horrors came spewing out like a nightmare from the past. Scientiests burst into tears, and many who saw those first pictures suffered what they later called minor nervous breakdowns. The world looked on, dumbfounded by the fallibility of man's suppsedly most invincible creations.

HER NAME, TITANIC includes a vivid portrait of explorer Robert Ballard, the brilliant leader of the expedition that discovered the TITANIC's remains. The author portrays Ballard and his crew in a compelling style unlike that of any other book on the subject. Charles Pellegrino is a scientist as well as an author, and he describes in riveting detail the scientific aspects of the machines and the processes involved in the expeditions.

But more than that, this is the first book to go beyond the headlines. By delving deep into the meaning of the TITANIC, which has evolved slowly from tragedy to symbol, and by putting himself into the minds of the people who play the characters in the drama. Charles Pellegrino has created a spellbinding work of oceanography that succeeds in illuminating new truths about the meaning of science -- and about the tragedies and joys of the human adventure.

I study Titanic and try to get every book possible on Titanic,( I've been studying Titanc, way before the movie was made). But when I bought this book and read it, I regreted it. It's a good book, for... how shall I say it, Beginner readers for Titanic. I give this book, in my opinion, 1 STAR because of it's lack of thought. The book seemed like it was made for new Titanic fans. Since I've been interested in Titanic for a long while, this book wasn't at all great.

I've read many of the works published on the sinking of the White Star liner, Titanic, and I have to say this is, without doubt, one of the poorest yet. Pellegrino obviously is trying for emotional meditative discourse, but failing that, ends up making up out of whole cloth entire conversations and scenarios. Titanic was *not* the first ship to use the SOS call. The inclusion of the Frank Towers myth is a dead giveaway that Pellegrino picks and chooses his myths, without bothering with such inanities as fact-checking. If it's entertainment and an emotional response you're after, go see Cameron's movie. If it's history you want, better to stick with other, far better, far more accurate works.

I came to this book through a rather round-about path, first introduced to the author through some papers he had written on advanced nuclear propulsion systems for rockets. Then some of my colleagues at the Air and Space Museum told me that the guy wrote mind-bending techno-thrillers on the side (and he does!), and finally I came to his non-fiction. I happen to be a hard-core engineer/test pilot and have always considered myself about as hard-boiled as they come. But when I read about Thomas Andrews and his men in the engine room - and about Rosa Abott and her two boys, I was really overcome and I just had to put the book down and leave the room before my wife and the kids saw that my eyes were full of tears.

Those familiar with the work of Charles Pellegrino know that his writing always drifts from the distant past to the present to the distant future, connecting disparate circumstances together into a coherent "big picture" by way of entertaining discourses on paleontology, archeology, biology, and astrophysics, to name but a few of the fields Mr. Pellegrino has worked in. In "Her Name, Titanic", the disparate events in question are the sinking of the ocean liner Titanic in 1912 and its discovery on the ocean floor in 1985, as well as subsequent missions to document the Titanic's wreckage more fully. "Her Name, Titanic" presents previously unpublished information about the sinking of the Titanic in the form of fictionalized narratives and direct quotes from survivors, based on newly discovered (at the time of writing) diaries and communication logs. There is much discussion of the technology and accomplishments of deep sea exploration, including interviews with Bob Ballard and other members of the teams that discovered and explored the Titanic wreckage. I didn't like "Her Name, Titanic" as much as I usually like Charles Pellegrino's books. This book actually focuses on one subject more than most of his books do, which turned out not to be a good thing. I found Pellegrino's enthusiasm to be somewhat less infectious than usual, as the middle portion of the book bogged down with too much talk about deep sea submersibles. Of course, if this is your field of interest, you may find that part of the book fascinating. Titanic aficionados will be thrilled to read new accounts of what happened that night in April 1912. I give the new information 5 stars and the more tedious aspects of the book 3 stars, so 4 stars as a whole.

If you're interested in the Titanic, this really is NOT the book for you! Pellegrino seems more interested in his own history, along with Bob Ballard's, than he does with the Titanic's. There are a few interesting passages jammed into a lot of rambling about machinery, sea exploration, ant SPACE EXPLORATION? If you want to read about the equitment used to find the Titanic and its many uses and missions beforehand, you MIGHT enjoy this book. If you want to read about the tragic story of the Titanic and what happened on that fateful night I would recommend "The Night Lives On" by Walter Lord.

Charles Pellegrino, while providing interesting insight into the finding of the sunken liner Titanic, obviously neglected to do his research on that which haunts him so. As a member of the Titanic Historical Society and a general Titanic enthusiast, I know much about the dreaded night of April 14th 1912 - in both fact and myth. Pellegrino draws from neither for his book, instead creating unfounded dialogues that, unfortunately, shed a bad light on some of the heros of that night. His extreme emotionalism - he takes it almost to the point of being farcical - distracts the reader from the events of both the 1912 sinking and the 1985 finding of the Titanic. This book had the potential to create a fascinating discourse between the two main events in the life of the liner, both academically and emotionally, but unfortunately it doesn't. Luckily we now have James Cameron's film "Titanic" to build what Pellegrino couldn't.