The Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters

Book excerpt: This is one of the first and most famous books published after the sinking of the Titanic, and contains much material from contemporary newspaper accounts. It was written by Logan Howard-Smith (under the pen name of Logan Marshall), an editor who specialized in the rapid publication of books about current events. For this book, his crowning achievement, the initial print run was for no fewer than 110,000 copies. The publisher achieved this by running 11 presses simultaneously, and the books were then sold door-to-door across America for a dollar apiece. Although Marshall's own description of the sinking is melodramatic and sensationalistic, the many verbatim interviews with survivors of the disaster have stood the test of time, and are often cited in Titanic literature.