Lilly Setterdahl's Not my time to die: Titanic and the Swedes on board, presents a brief, but thorough history of the Titanic. The book describes the conditions in Sweden in 1912, the reasons for the emigration, and profiles each of the 125 Swedes on board. The stories of the 34 survivors cover some 100 pages. The author has researched the intriguing lives of the survivors to a greater extent than anyone else. She has translated eye-witness accounts, letters, newspaper reports, and interviews that give new insight in what happened on that tragic night one-hundred years ago when the biggest steamer built-to-date foundered on its maiden voyage.

'It would make the stones cry to hear those on board shrieking' - Daniel Buckley, third-class passenger For the first time, in this moving new book, Titanic's passengers and crewmen are permitted to tell the story of that lamentable disaster entirely in their own words. Included are letters, postcards, diary entries and memoirs that were written before, during and immediately after the maiden voyage itself. Many of the pre-sailing documents were composed by people who later lost their lives in the sinking and represent the last communications that these people ever had with their friends and loved ones at home. The subsequent letters and postcards give an unparalleled description of the events that occurred during the five days that Titanic was at sea, and the correspondence by survivors after the tragedy describes the horror of the disaster itself and the heartbreak they experienced at the loss of those they loved. This poignant compilation, by Titanic expert George Behe, also contains brief biographies of the passengers and crewmen, victims, as well as survivors, who wrote the documents in question.

A cloth bag containing eight copies of the title.

“Maxtone-Graham’s take on the Titanic will be catnip to the ship’s dedicated buffs.”—Publishers Weekly This is a book unlike any other. Rather than offering simply a detailed retelling of the Titanic sinking on her maiden voyage, John Maxtone-Graham devotes his considerable knowledge and impeccable prose to a discussion of salient, provocative, and rarely investigated components of the story, including dramatic survivors’ accounts of the events of the fateful night, the role of newly in-vented wireless telecommunication in the disaster, the construction and its ramifications at the famous Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, and the dawn rendezvous with the rescue ship Carpathia. Richly written and vividly detailed, this is the book Titanic buffs have been waiting for.