A Big Chuck Book Review: “Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage” A Titanic Page Turner!

Hugh Brewster' "Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage) allows us a wonderful and fascinating "step through the looking glass" aboard the fateful maiden voyage of the Titanic.

Brewster examines the lives of the high-society blue bloods who people the expensive salons and cabins of the ship.  With a fortune worth more than a billion dollars, the family names represented in this book virtually leap off the page: From John Jacob Astor to Benjamin Guggenheim to "The Unsinkable" Molly Brown, these pampered and sheltered "rich and famous" were left to struggle with at he denouement of one of the 20th-centruy's most dramatic stories.

Of local interest is the story of industrialist Arthur Ryerson.  This mufti-millionaire was aboard the Titanic with his wife and children.  He went down with the ship.  The Ryersons were from Cooperstown, N.Y., and his centopath can be found in the Ryerson family plot at Lakeview Cemetery on the eastern shore of Otsego Lake.

Brewster tells us who these people are, what they were doing just before the ship encountered a "rouge iceberg," how they acted when the ship went down and what the rest of their lives consisted of (for the survivors).  It is encyclopedic in its scope of these wealthy passengers and the tragedy itself.

I loved this book and give it 4-meatballs, which is my highest rating!

This book can be found at The Green Toad Book Store, Main Street, Oneonta, N.Y.