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W. W. Norton & Company

Down with the Old Canoe: A Cultural History of the Titanic Disaster

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"Brimming over with wit and insight…Fresh and fascinating." ―Dan Rather Everyone from suffragists to their opponents; radicals, reformers, and capitalists; critics of technology and modern life; racists and xenophobes and champions of racial and ethnic equality; editorial writers and folk singers, preachers and poets found moral and cultural lessons in the sinking of the Titanic. In a new edition that both commemorates the one hundredth anniversary of the disaster and elaborates, in a revised afterword, on the ship's continued impact on the public imagination (evidenced by the Titanic mania evoked by James Cameron's 1997 film), Steven Biel explores the Titanic in all its complexity and contradictions. 16 pages of black-and-white photographs and illustrations Read more

Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company


Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 26, 2012


Edition ‏ : ‎ Updated


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Print length ‏ : ‎ 330 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393340805


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 08


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.9 x 8.3 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #1,258,277 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #631 in Ship History (Books) #913 in United States History (Books) #8,593 in Historical Study (Books)


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • Five Stars
100% satisfied
Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2015 by Tom Forsyth
    • NOT an objective history but an attack on you, the reader.
In his introduction to this book, Steven Biel begins by saying that he doesn't "get" the fascination with the Titanic disaster. Which is fine - you don't have to be passionate about a topic to be a good researcher, writer, or historian. And if he had stopped there and simply continued to write an objective history, everything would be cool. Unfortunately...no. Mr. Biel then goes on to state the "fact" that the Titanic disaster is not historically significant in any way and has no inherent properties that could possibly resonate with anyone. Therefore, anyone who expresses interest in the topic can't genuinely be interested in it (since it has no inherent value). Instead, these people must have some sort of deep internal flaw or unmet need which causes them to grasp onto the disaster to support their individual agendas. I'm not making this up, exaggerating or misinterpreting; this is literally what is stated in the book. All that being said, the first few chapters of the book are actually quite informative and well researched and pretty interesting. They deal with contemporary reactions to the disaster and how each individual group used it to support their specific platforms, beliefs, and agendas. Even though in retrospect I can see that this really is just setting the groundwork for the author's attack agenda later on, I feel that it's a pretty decent historical account. Unfortunately, once we move further on through time towards the present day, the book really begins to fall apart as the attack on the Titanic enthusiast becomes more naked and vicious. This got more tedious and repellent. By the time we get to the theory that the members of the Titanic Historical Society are all frustrated white men with unfulfilling jobs who yearn for those old Edwardian days to give themselves the illusion of controlling their world, I was pretty much done. Unfortunately, the irony that writing a book about everyone else's agenda merely reveals his own agenda seems to be beyond the author. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2015 by Anthony F.
    • Steven's Arrogant Rant
"Arrogant" does not being to describe Steven Biel's style of argument, but it is a start. Starting off in his introduction and continuing until his afterword, Biel adopts a holier than thous attitude towards "popular" historians such as Walter Lord, Wynn Craig Wade, and others -- ignoring how these Titanic historians, and others, took their scholarship very seriously despite their status as avocational historians. The first part of Biel's book does contain some interesting information regarding public reaction to the Titanic disaster, but the book, already hobbled by his arrogant slamming of "popular" historians in its introduction, takes a steep nose dive when Biel tries to put Walter Lords' classic book "A Night To Remember" into the cultural context of the 1950s. Biel adopts a highly "academic" tone from here on until the end of the book, making up connections between Lord's book and the 1950s that do not exist -- as all authors who write academic works do. Worse, Biel claims Lord embraced myths about the disaster spawned in 1912 in his book, an outright libelous claim given Lord's serious study of the disaster. Walter was nobody's fool and simply sought to retell the Titanic disaster in a compelling away (apparently a sin according to holier than thou professionals like Biel, who seem to think historical events need to be confined to dry, boring textbook-style retelling). Biel then proceeds to claim Titanic students blindly embraced the same myths about the disaster that Lord and dismisses their efforts at seeking historical truth as trivial at best. Biel really begins to rant by the time he gets to Clive Cussler and Robert Ballard. Biel bends and twists the plot and meaning of Clive's novel "Raise The Titanic!" and all but claims Ballard was trying to promote "masculinity" in his writings about finding the Titanic. The former is a deplorable example of selective scholarship, while the latter is so outrageous it is almost as if Biel wrote the passages about Ballard while drunk, stoned, or both. Steven Biel did the memory of the Titanic disaster little service in this tome, but he did reveal the arrogant side of professional historians. If anarchy was legal and I ever met this guy at Harvard Yard, I would knock him to the ground, lean over him, and say, "Shame on you for slandering Walter Lord and so many other professional avocational historians, you supreme egotist." ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2015 by Tony Held

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