Walter Lord

It would be nice to say the rich people, the fancy people, all behaved like bastards and the poor slobs all came through like heroes. But as a matter of fact, sometimes the poor slobs behave like slobs and the great, noble, privileged characters come off very well, indeed. 

From a 1981 interview with Lord about A Night to Remember (1955), his best-selling book about the sinking of the Titanic, which I recall as being one of the most compelling books in the Joplin Public Library.

Walter Lord was born on this date in 1917.  He was a graduate of Princeton and Yale Law School, and also wrote best-selling popular histories on Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway, the Battle of the Alamo, the War of 1812, and the Peary expedition to the North Pole.  

Walter Lord in 1958