For Titanic anniversary, the books go on

In her book “How to Survive the Titanic,” an elegant account of the infamy that hounded J. Bruce Ismay, the chairman of the company that owned the ship, after he fled the sinking giant in a lifeboat, Frances Wilson writes, “The need felt by survivors to tell their tales was, from the start, overwhelming and the need of those who were not on board to read their accounts, to see the films, to repeat the experience and work it through, to raise the Titanic and watch her go down again and again is one of the shipwreck’s most peculiar effects.”
The centennial anniversary of the Titanic disaster is April 14, and publishers appear to be hoping that readers maintain an almost infinite appetite for it. Viewed as a group, the number of Titanic-related books that have crossed my desk in recent weeks borders on the comical. But to dip into almost any one of them in particular is to be riveted by a story that remains deeply eerie, dramatic and heartbreaking.