This is one of my longer reviews, but I wanted to make everyone aware of this amazing book coming in April 2026.

You may think you know everything about the Titanic, but hold on to your life jackets; Doughty takes a very deep dive into everything Titanic, focusing mainly on the wreckage and body recovery. “Body recovery”, you may be asking? Many (me included) assumed most of the passengers and crew went to the bottom of the sea and were eventually reduced to nothing but a pair of shoes, but while some were, many were found floating (with a few survivors) and required extensive retrieval. Doughty covers the sinking, recovery, and salvage efforts with her trademark knowledge, research, and empathy, although I fear some of her images will forever haunt my dreams. Here is a passage a few pages in that is still burned into my brain: (Disclaimer: I was given permission to quote, even though it is from the advance reading copy and is not final.)

“The early morning light revealed something else—shattered wood paneling, drawer panels, lounge chairs floating in the water. Six days previously, RMS Titanic had sunk. This was the debris. Even stranger: what looked to the men like dozens of seagulls paddling across the water, rising and falling on the rolling waves.

As the cable-ship sailed closer, the men aboard listened for the cawing of seabirds. Instead, there was silence. The objects were not seagulls, but life jackets. Each of these hundreds of life jackets buoyed a human body, making the Atlantic a graveyard of bobbing whitecaps. The dead wore tuxedos, fur coats, and steward’s jackets—a full cross-section of a passenger ship, scattered across the open sea.”

Even if this passage gives you the heebie-jeebies, please pre-order this amazing book and clear your schedule for April, because it will absorb you from start to finish.

And if you have never read Caitlin Doughty’s books (or watched her YouTube videos), get a copy of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, a memoir about her time working in a crematory.

Thanks to the publisher for permission to read the advance digital reading copy. Scheduled for publication in April 2026.