They sparkled with celebrity, the rich and famous of a sumptuous age, and chance brought them together on the Titanic:



John Jacob Astor, a man who owned much of New York City, traveling with a pregnant young bride;



W. T. Stead, England's greatest muckraker, occultist, theosophist, candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize;



Isidor Straus, one-time Confederate agent who had won control of Macy's;



Ben Guggenheim, aging playboy, black sheep of a grayish family, encumbered with a disgruntled French mistress;



Harry Widener, handsome young American millionaire absorbed in Shakespeare's "The School of Night" and in the rules of poker;



Archibald Butt, chief military aide to President Taft, on a mission from Pope Pius X that could alter the peace of the world;



Frank Millet, artist and author, cynical of womanhood but a connoisseur of female beauty;



Dorothy Gibson, glamorous fi lm star, looking for love.



Titanic sailed through deluded times, carrying these now half-remembered lives with their dangerous baggage. Weaving among them are a famous detective known as "The Thinking Machine," and two secret agents in a contest that presages the coming World War.



Archibald Patterson has written an intriguing account, rich in absorbing detail, that immerses the reader in the year 1912, from Berlin to Rome to Paris, then from London to Southampton and onto the world's greatest liner, Titanic, on its fateful five day voyage.



He is also author of a biography, "Between Hitler and Stalin, the Quick Life and Secret Death of Edward Smigly-Rydz, Marshal of Poland," and a biographical novel, "The Devil's Own Dilemma," a pivotal month in the lives of John Quincy and Louisa Adams.