This is the first book to deal exclusively with the influence and meaning of what media historian Paul Heyer calls "our century's first collective nightmare." Using contemporary as well as archival sources, he explores a series of intriguing questions: Why has the TITANIC disaster affected the way we think about ourselves and our technology? How has the media made it into a morality play of mythic dimensions? What impact has that story had on the development of 20th-century communications?

This timely and compelling book pays homage to the TITANIC's fateful voyage by attempting to explain not why she struck an iceberg on a cold April night in 1912, but what is surely her greatest enigma: the hold the event still has over us.