A much-needed tribute to the Titanic’s Chinese passengers.
The little-known story of how six Chinese men survived the Titanic.
This book is a follow-up to a documentary that Schwankert made about this amazing tale of survival at sea. He begins with Fong Wing Sun from Taishan, China, on Xiachuan Island. Along with many other Chinese young men, he would travel to Hong Kong, then to Europe. Schwankert discusses the major shipping lines, including the White Star Line, the men who ran them, and the ships they built, including the Titanic in 1909—the “largest and most luxurious ship in the world.” Eight third-class Chinese passengers, all working seamen, were listed on the ship’s April 1912 maiden voyage, ranging in age from 24 to 38. Fong is listed as Fang Lang, 26, but Schwankert believes he was 18. All were staying in a London boardinghouse. There were 900 crew members and 1,300 passengers. Schwankert conjectures what life was like for them on board. Fang, Lee Ling, and Len Lam knew each other, hoping to become merchants in America. At 11:40 p.m. the Titanic struck an iceberg. The men would have gone to the boat deck hoping to find a lifeboat, but there weren’t enough for everyone. Cheong Foo made it to one, so did Ah Lam, Chang Chip, Lee Bing, and Ling Hee in Collapsible Lifeboat C. Lee Ling and Len Lam did not survive. Fang was rescued from the water. The six survivors—among 712—reunited on the deck of the Carpathia. That they lived was “almost incredible.” But history didn’t treat the “stowaways” well and Schwankert goes into great detail to reinstate their “tarnished” reputations, describe what happened to them afterward, and tell the story behind his documentary.
A much-needed tribute to the Titanic’s Chinese passengers.Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781639368679
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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