Walter Lord
Born October 8th, 1917 in Baltimore, Maryland
Died May 19th, 2002 in New York, New York
A soldier who never was in battle, a sailor who never served the Navy, an historian never shackled by academia, a raconteur, a gentleman, a gracious host; a jewel.
Walter Lord is probably best known for his classic account of the sinking of the Titanic, A Night to Remember, but he was much more than that. He is not technically a children's book writer but he wrote books which not only were popular with adults but also captured the imagination and attention of readers in that perilous zone between twelve and eighteen. That time when children can read, but so often fall out of the habit of reading for lack of books which appeal. Walter Lord wrote a sequence of books that, for any child even marginally interested in history, gripped and held tight. In any gathering of enthusiastic readers comparing notes with one another of what they enjoyed reading when they were younger, Lord's name is almost certain to come up.
It was with A Night to Remember that I first became acquainted with the work of Walter Lord. I was perhaps eleven or twelve. We were living in Sweden at the time, our school library a single large room with only a few thousand books but a well selected collection none-the-less. With the long winters and the many months when the outdoor environment is less than inviting, Sweden is quite conducive to forming the habit of reading. We had one class period a week during which we were basically turned loose in the library under the daunting gaze of Ms. Little.
Perhaps we were required to check out books but my recollection is that, other than to be quiet, you were allowed to do what you wanted. Catch-up on homework, cruise the shelves, read a book you had already selected.
There were of course favorite sections: history, science, adventure stories. Somewhere in there, buried away was A Night to Remember. It had an unassuming cover and was simply one of a stack of books checked out to last the week. I never guessed on opening to the first page that it would be one of those books that all readers love and hate. Love because you fall into the story and want to rush along with the author's narrative. And hate because dinner intrudes, as does homework, household chores. Each requiring you to disengage from this otherworldly experience, re-enter the here and now before escaping once again.
Lord was that kind of an author.
He was born into a prosperous Baltimore family on October 8th, 1917. His father was a successful lawyer and he had one sister. His fascination with the story of the Titanic was fostered by early experiences. A family story related how his mother had been dispatched into the care of a sea captain for a voyage during which time she was to make up her mind on some matrimonial proposal. The captain on that voyage: Captain Edward J. Smith, later of the Titanic.
When he was seven years old, Lord was taken by his mother for a transatlantic journey on the Titanic's sister ship, the Olympic. Shortly after that he began collecting memorabilia pertaining to the Titanic, a collection that was to become substantial and unique over a lifetime and which now resides with the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich in New York City.
At ten, on a rainy weekend at an aunt's house, he came across a survivor's account of the Titanic, The Loss of the S.S. Titanic, and was at that point hooked.
He graduated from the Gilman School in Baltimore (he won the Princeton-Gilman Alumni Cup for his speech about the Titanic) and studied history at Princeton University, graduating in 1939. From Princeton he entered Yale to study law though his studies were interrupted with the advent of World War II. He joined the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, DC (the predecessor of today's CIA) as a code clerk and was then posted to Britain as an intelligence analyst. It was in the OSS that he met and became friends with historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and future CIA Director, William Casey.
According to Schlesinger who was shipped to London along with Lord in 1944, Lord's interest in the Titanic was alive and well. As they travelled through the Battle of the Atlantic with German submarines all about and the detritus of the war floating by them, Lord's enthusiastic recounting of the sinking of the Titanic sat a little too close to home for some. "That was not what we wanted to hear" recollected Schlesinger.
At the close of the war Lord returned to Yale to complete his legal studies (rooming with future Secretary of State Cyrus Vance) but with no desire to practice law. The next few years were a formative and intriguing period. He first joined the Research Institute of America. It was there that he met and began to work with a tax expert, J.K. Lasser on newsletters, books and tax manuals. He later claimed that he learned his skills as an investigator and of the importance of close attention to detail during this period of his writing life. From there, in 1951, he worked for Business Reports for a year and then moved to the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency working as a copywriter.
In the early nineteen fifties, Lord came across a neglected book in an antique bookstore. Sir Arthur Fremantle, a British military man and Confederate sympathizer toured the South in 1863 and put together a small edition relating his experiences which he published in 1874. In the evenings, after his day job, Lord turned his hand to writing an annotated version of Fremantle's book. Simultaneously he was also working on an account of the Titanic. In 1954 Lord's annotated version of Fremantle's book was published and, while of a very specialized interest, was critically well received.
A year later, in 1955, Lord published A Night to Remember. This seminal work provided the foundation for Lord's financial independence based on its commercial success. It was popularly and critically well received. In fact, Lord has been credited as the progenitor of detail oriented history grounded in a strong narrative. Contemporary historians such as David McCulough (1776, John Adams, Mornings on Horseback, The Path Between the Seas, Johnstown Flood, and Truman) acknowledge Lord as their role model.
Aside from his lifetime fascination with the Titanic, his boyhood experiences on her sister ship, the Olympia, and his collection of Titanic memorabilia, Lord's preparation for the writing of A Night to Remember consisted principally of good old fashioned research and reportage. He tracked down sixty-three survivors of the disaster and built his story from a synthesis of their experiences and observations and his research.
The result was distinctive. Rich description, a compelling narrative pace all infused with distinct personalities. Lord's gentlemanly nature matched with his respect for the facts came through in many of the details of the story. The actions of people facing their own mortality are reported with respect. At the same time the questionable decisions of a few (such as the White Star Line's managing director J. Bruce Ismay) are duly noted. The fact that the men of the first and second class overwhelmingly ensured that women and children went first into to the too few lifeboats was admirable. Lord was among the first to point out though that through a whole different set of circumstances, the bulk of the third class passengers did not reach the decks until the ship was far gone and consequently more than 75% of them lost their lives.
Even though it has been many years since I last read A Night to Remember, I can recall, courtesy of Lord's effective story telling, tale after tale from that dreadful night. Of course the iconic band playing as the ship went down. But there were many other, more subtle stories, reflecting a certain style and courage. There was the gentleman travelling with his wife and valet. The two men, after having made sure the wife had a place in a lifeboat and was safely launched away, slipped back to their respective cabins to change, returning to the deck formally dressed in their evening suits. I have a mind's eye picture of those two standing together, gentleman and gentleman's gentleman, standing there in the cold night air, resplendently, quietly, and courageously awaiting the inevitable.
Then there was the aged, wealthy matriarch, Ida Straus wife of Isidor Straus who made his fortune through his department store, Macy's. Married for forty one years, devoted to one another, when the time came for Ida to take a place in a lifeboat, she declined on the basis that she had never been apart from her husband and would not leave him now. Instead, she instructed her maid to take her place, handed the maid the fur coat she was wearing, saying "I won't need this anymore." Last seen, the Straus's stood in an embrace as the Titanic slipped away.
Then there was the energetic and persistent heroism of Second Officer Lightoller, the ranking surviving officer of the Titanic. At sea since the age of thirteen and thoroughly imbued with the traditions of the British seaman, Lightoller was the officer responsible for filling and lowering the port life boats. Still at his station, wrestling along with a crew of seaman to free the last collapsible life boat, Lightoller ended up diving straight into the oncoming water as the Titanic slipped under.
Surfacing, he eventually located the overturned Collapsible B and managed to organize some thirty survivors to mount the keel of the boat. Through the small hours of the morning he kept them organized, shifting weight, constantly adjusting and counterbalancing the rising swell. Their survival was entirely dependent on his leadership.
Swept from the decks of the Titanic as she went down, Lightoller was also the last person to be picked up by the rescuing Carpathia.
Lightoller served courageously in World War I in the British Navy, ending the war as Lieutenant-Commander. Despite his record, Lightoller found after the war, as did many other crewmen from the Titanic, that that night shadowed their careers. Quietly, doors of advancement and opportunity were closed. Lightoller retired from the sea and took up chicken farming in Hampshire. He emerged from retirement and yet again into a Walter Lord book, in World War II. In The Miracle of Dunkirk, Lord records that Lightoller was one among the many small boat owners who answered the call of the British Navy to assist in taking off 330,000 British soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk. Lightoller and one of his sons sailed over and, on a boat that had only ever held a maximum of 20 people before, returned with 125 men.
While none of his books can quite match the compact high-octane story-telling achieved in A Night to Remember, they are all compelling reads. The particular standouts all have to do with battle. Day of Infamy (1957) chronicles the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Lord conducted more than four hundred interviews to piece together the events and was noted for his having included participants from the Japanese side in the telling of the story. A Time to Stand (1961) is an account of the Alamo (an excellent read). Incredible Victory (1967) is an account of the Battle of Midway, the battle in the Pacific which, six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, inexorably turned the tide of war in America's favor. Again, Lord conducted hundreds of interviews with participants from both sides to come up with a "You were there" story. Finally, Lord's penultimate book was The Miracle of Dunkirk (1982), a gripping recounting of that unparalleled miracle in which Britain, against all odds, snatched it entire Expeditionary Force, its entire army, from the encircling Germans at Dunkirk. Like A Night to Remember it is rich with personal stories that stay with you forever.
Walter Lord, after a long struggle with Parkinson's Disease, passed away in his Manhattan apartment at the age of 84 on May 19th, 2002.
This book list is divided into two sections:
(1) Books for Young Adults
(2) Walter Lord Bibliography
The list begins below with Young Adult, but you can use the following link to skip directly to the Walter Lord Bibliography sections.
Go to books for Young Adult
Go to the Walter Lord Bibliography
Young Adult
Walter Lord Bibliography
The Fremantle Diary by Walter Lord 1954
A Night to Remember by Walter Lord 1955
Day of Infamy by Walter Lord 1957
The Good Years by Walter Lord 1960
A Time to Stand by Walter Lord 1961
Peary to the Pole by Walter Lord 1963
The Past That Would Not Die by Walter Lord 1965
Incredible Victory by Walter Lord 1967
The Dawn's Early Light by Walter Lord 1972
Lonely Vigil by Walter Lord 1977
The Miracle of Dunkirk by Walter Lord 1982
The Night Lives On by Walter Lord 1986
The Fremantle Diary by Walter Lord 2001
Died May 19th, 2002 in New York, New York
A soldier who never was in battle, a sailor who never served the Navy, an historian never shackled by academia, a raconteur, a gentleman, a gracious host; a jewel.
Walter Lord is probably best known for his classic account of the sinking of the Titanic, A Night to Remember, but he was much more than that. He is not technically a children's book writer but he wrote books which not only were popular with adults but also captured the imagination and attention of readers in that perilous zone between twelve and eighteen. That time when children can read, but so often fall out of the habit of reading for lack of books which appeal. Walter Lord wrote a sequence of books that, for any child even marginally interested in history, gripped and held tight. In any gathering of enthusiastic readers comparing notes with one another of what they enjoyed reading when they were younger, Lord's name is almost certain to come up.
It was with A Night to Remember that I first became acquainted with the work of Walter Lord. I was perhaps eleven or twelve. We were living in Sweden at the time, our school library a single large room with only a few thousand books but a well selected collection none-the-less. With the long winters and the many months when the outdoor environment is less than inviting, Sweden is quite conducive to forming the habit of reading. We had one class period a week during which we were basically turned loose in the library under the daunting gaze of Ms. Little.
Perhaps we were required to check out books but my recollection is that, other than to be quiet, you were allowed to do what you wanted. Catch-up on homework, cruise the shelves, read a book you had already selected.
There were of course favorite sections: history, science, adventure stories. Somewhere in there, buried away was A Night to Remember. It had an unassuming cover and was simply one of a stack of books checked out to last the week. I never guessed on opening to the first page that it would be one of those books that all readers love and hate. Love because you fall into the story and want to rush along with the author's narrative. And hate because dinner intrudes, as does homework, household chores. Each requiring you to disengage from this otherworldly experience, re-enter the here and now before escaping once again.
Lord was that kind of an author.
He was born into a prosperous Baltimore family on October 8th, 1917. His father was a successful lawyer and he had one sister. His fascination with the story of the Titanic was fostered by early experiences. A family story related how his mother had been dispatched into the care of a sea captain for a voyage during which time she was to make up her mind on some matrimonial proposal. The captain on that voyage: Captain Edward J. Smith, later of the Titanic.
When he was seven years old, Lord was taken by his mother for a transatlantic journey on the Titanic's sister ship, the Olympic. Shortly after that he began collecting memorabilia pertaining to the Titanic, a collection that was to become substantial and unique over a lifetime and which now resides with the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich in New York City.
At ten, on a rainy weekend at an aunt's house, he came across a survivor's account of the Titanic, The Loss of the S.S. Titanic, and was at that point hooked.
He graduated from the Gilman School in Baltimore (he won the Princeton-Gilman Alumni Cup for his speech about the Titanic) and studied history at Princeton University, graduating in 1939. From Princeton he entered Yale to study law though his studies were interrupted with the advent of World War II. He joined the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, DC (the predecessor of today's CIA) as a code clerk and was then posted to Britain as an intelligence analyst. It was in the OSS that he met and became friends with historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and future CIA Director, William Casey.
According to Schlesinger who was shipped to London along with Lord in 1944, Lord's interest in the Titanic was alive and well. As they travelled through the Battle of the Atlantic with German submarines all about and the detritus of the war floating by them, Lord's enthusiastic recounting of the sinking of the Titanic sat a little too close to home for some. "That was not what we wanted to hear" recollected Schlesinger.
At the close of the war Lord returned to Yale to complete his legal studies (rooming with future Secretary of State Cyrus Vance) but with no desire to practice law. The next few years were a formative and intriguing period. He first joined the Research Institute of America. It was there that he met and began to work with a tax expert, J.K. Lasser on newsletters, books and tax manuals. He later claimed that he learned his skills as an investigator and of the importance of close attention to detail during this period of his writing life. From there, in 1951, he worked for Business Reports for a year and then moved to the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency working as a copywriter.
In the early nineteen fifties, Lord came across a neglected book in an antique bookstore. Sir Arthur Fremantle, a British military man and Confederate sympathizer toured the South in 1863 and put together a small edition relating his experiences which he published in 1874. In the evenings, after his day job, Lord turned his hand to writing an annotated version of Fremantle's book. Simultaneously he was also working on an account of the Titanic. In 1954 Lord's annotated version of Fremantle's book was published and, while of a very specialized interest, was critically well received.
A year later, in 1955, Lord published A Night to Remember. This seminal work provided the foundation for Lord's financial independence based on its commercial success. It was popularly and critically well received. In fact, Lord has been credited as the progenitor of detail oriented history grounded in a strong narrative. Contemporary historians such as David McCulough (1776, John Adams, Mornings on Horseback, The Path Between the Seas, Johnstown Flood, and Truman) acknowledge Lord as their role model.
Aside from his lifetime fascination with the Titanic, his boyhood experiences on her sister ship, the Olympia, and his collection of Titanic memorabilia, Lord's preparation for the writing of A Night to Remember consisted principally of good old fashioned research and reportage. He tracked down sixty-three survivors of the disaster and built his story from a synthesis of their experiences and observations and his research.
The result was distinctive. Rich description, a compelling narrative pace all infused with distinct personalities. Lord's gentlemanly nature matched with his respect for the facts came through in many of the details of the story. The actions of people facing their own mortality are reported with respect. At the same time the questionable decisions of a few (such as the White Star Line's managing director J. Bruce Ismay) are duly noted. The fact that the men of the first and second class overwhelmingly ensured that women and children went first into to the too few lifeboats was admirable. Lord was among the first to point out though that through a whole different set of circumstances, the bulk of the third class passengers did not reach the decks until the ship was far gone and consequently more than 75% of them lost their lives.
Even though it has been many years since I last read A Night to Remember, I can recall, courtesy of Lord's effective story telling, tale after tale from that dreadful night. Of course the iconic band playing as the ship went down. But there were many other, more subtle stories, reflecting a certain style and courage. There was the gentleman travelling with his wife and valet. The two men, after having made sure the wife had a place in a lifeboat and was safely launched away, slipped back to their respective cabins to change, returning to the deck formally dressed in their evening suits. I have a mind's eye picture of those two standing together, gentleman and gentleman's gentleman, standing there in the cold night air, resplendently, quietly, and courageously awaiting the inevitable.
Then there was the aged, wealthy matriarch, Ida Straus wife of Isidor Straus who made his fortune through his department store, Macy's. Married for forty one years, devoted to one another, when the time came for Ida to take a place in a lifeboat, she declined on the basis that she had never been apart from her husband and would not leave him now. Instead, she instructed her maid to take her place, handed the maid the fur coat she was wearing, saying "I won't need this anymore." Last seen, the Straus's stood in an embrace as the Titanic slipped away.
Then there was the energetic and persistent heroism of Second Officer Lightoller, the ranking surviving officer of the Titanic. At sea since the age of thirteen and thoroughly imbued with the traditions of the British seaman, Lightoller was the officer responsible for filling and lowering the port life boats. Still at his station, wrestling along with a crew of seaman to free the last collapsible life boat, Lightoller ended up diving straight into the oncoming water as the Titanic slipped under.
Surfacing, he eventually located the overturned Collapsible B and managed to organize some thirty survivors to mount the keel of the boat. Through the small hours of the morning he kept them organized, shifting weight, constantly adjusting and counterbalancing the rising swell. Their survival was entirely dependent on his leadership.
Swept from the decks of the Titanic as she went down, Lightoller was also the last person to be picked up by the rescuing Carpathia.
Lightoller served courageously in World War I in the British Navy, ending the war as Lieutenant-Commander. Despite his record, Lightoller found after the war, as did many other crewmen from the Titanic, that that night shadowed their careers. Quietly, doors of advancement and opportunity were closed. Lightoller retired from the sea and took up chicken farming in Hampshire. He emerged from retirement and yet again into a Walter Lord book, in World War II. In The Miracle of Dunkirk, Lord records that Lightoller was one among the many small boat owners who answered the call of the British Navy to assist in taking off 330,000 British soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk. Lightoller and one of his sons sailed over and, on a boat that had only ever held a maximum of 20 people before, returned with 125 men.
While none of his books can quite match the compact high-octane story-telling achieved in A Night to Remember, they are all compelling reads. The particular standouts all have to do with battle. Day of Infamy (1957) chronicles the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Lord conducted more than four hundred interviews to piece together the events and was noted for his having included participants from the Japanese side in the telling of the story. A Time to Stand (1961) is an account of the Alamo (an excellent read). Incredible Victory (1967) is an account of the Battle of Midway, the battle in the Pacific which, six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, inexorably turned the tide of war in America's favor. Again, Lord conducted hundreds of interviews with participants from both sides to come up with a "You were there" story. Finally, Lord's penultimate book was The Miracle of Dunkirk (1982), a gripping recounting of that unparalleled miracle in which Britain, against all odds, snatched it entire Expeditionary Force, its entire army, from the encircling Germans at Dunkirk. Like A Night to Remember it is rich with personal stories that stay with you forever.
Walter Lord, after a long struggle with Parkinson's Disease, passed away in his Manhattan apartment at the age of 84 on May 19th, 2002.
This book list is divided into two sections:
(1) Books for Young Adults
(2) Walter Lord Bibliography
The list begins below with Young Adult, but you can use the following link to skip directly to the Walter Lord Bibliography sections.
Go to books for Young Adult
Go to the Walter Lord Bibliography
Young Adult
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A Night To Remember by Walter Lord Highly Recommended |
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Day of Infamy by Walter Lord Recommended |
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A Time to Stand by Walter Lord Recommended |
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The Miracle of Dunkirk by Walter Lord and read by Jeff Cummings (AUDIO BOOK) Recommended |
Walter Lord Bibliography
The Fremantle Diary by Walter Lord 1954
A Night to Remember by Walter Lord 1955
Day of Infamy by Walter Lord 1957
The Good Years by Walter Lord 1960
A Time to Stand by Walter Lord 1961
Peary to the Pole by Walter Lord 1963
The Past That Would Not Die by Walter Lord 1965
Incredible Victory by Walter Lord 1967
The Dawn's Early Light by Walter Lord 1972
Lonely Vigil by Walter Lord 1977
The Miracle of Dunkirk by Walter Lord 1982
The Night Lives On by Walter Lord 1986
The Fremantle Diary by Walter Lord 2001