In April 1912, six notable people were among those privileged to experience the height of luxury, first-class passage on the Titanic: Lucy Leslie, Countess of Rothes; son of the British Empire, Tommy Andrews; American captain of industry John Thayer and his son Jack; Jewish-American immigrant Ida Straus; and American model and movie star Dorothy Gibson. Within a week of setting sail, they were all caught up in the horrifying disaster of the Titanic's sinking, one of the biggest news stories of the century. Today, we can see their stories and the Titanic's voyage as the beginning of the end of the established hierarchy of the Edwardian era. Writing in his elegant signature prose and using previously unpublished sources, deck plans, journal entries, and surviving artifacts, Gareth Russell peers through the portholes of these first-class travelers to immerse us in a time of unprecedented change in British and American history.

"A product of Anglo-American capitalism, built by a generation that had never known trauma and was bored by its own prosperity and success, the Titanic set sail into a world that was about to change forever. Modernity was shaking the class system, the Industrial Revolution was creating new kinds of wealth, and revolutionary fervor would lead to The Great War. Exploring the infamous disaster from the perspectives of six of her first-class passengers--a British aristocrat, a celebrated maritime architect, an American railway tycoon and his son, a first-generation American philanthropist, and a silent movie star--The Ship of Dreams uses the ship's creation and her tragic fate as a window into the changing, unsettled world at the end of the Edwardian era. Utilizing previously unpublished sources, deck plans, and surviving artifacts, it disproves many of the most established myths about the Titanic, including the treatment of her third-class passengers, the conspiracies surrounding her cons