Her Name, Titanic: The Untold Story of the Sinking and Finding of the Unsinkable Ship

Evolutionary biologist and spacecraft consultant Pellegrino ( Chariots of Apollo , etc.) celebrates the importance of oceanographic exploration in this personalsometimes pretentious and repetitiousreflection on the wreck of the Titanic and the long-awaited discovery of its site 73 years later. The book contains a gripping dramatization of the 1912 disaster, enhanced by unpublished diaries, transcripts of wireless transmissions and interviews of survivors. Woven into the account of the sinking is the story of oceanographer Robert Ballard, whose team of men and robots struggled to find the location of the wreck and now work to protect the site from commercial exploitation. Ruminating on parallels between the Titanic disaster and the loss of the Challenger spaceshuttle (overconfident builders and unexpected ice played a part in both tragedies), Pellegrino argues that exploration of hitherto unknown ocean depths may yield more secrets about the universe than space exploration. Photos not seen by PW. (Dec.)