Why we’re excited
Caitlin Doughty looks at the Titanic through its dead: the 1,500 who did not survive, the cable-repair crews who became undertakers at sea, and the salvaged shoes and hairbrushes that ended up owned by a company. She also explains what cold water does to a body.
Doughty, a mortician, wrote Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? and runs the Ask a Mortician channel. Her mix of frank science and dark humour suits this subject well. History readers who think they know the story should find plenty that is new.
On our most-anticipated list since 22 October 2026. See all the most anticipated books →
What to know about Dead in the Water: The Lost Passengers of the Titanic
We haven’t reviewed Caitlin Doughty before, so this would be our first look at their work.
From the publisher
New York Times best-selling author Caitlin Doughty presents Titanic like never before: through the stories of those who died—and what happened to the bodies.
Millions of people trust Caitlin Doughty to explore dark subjects with empathy and humor. Now, in her most ambitious work to date, Doughty explains what actually happened to the 1,500 people who died the night of history’s most famous shipwreck. Alongside white-knuckle tales of survival and mass death during the disaster, Doughty foregrounds the haunting stories of lesser-known victims, profiles the telegraph-cable-repairmen–turned–seafaring-undertakers who pulled the floating bodies from the wreck site in the North Atlantic, and explores how a salvage company came to control the human artifacts—shoes, hairbrushes—carried and worn by the dead passengers and crew. Along the way she shares the surprising science of death at sea, and how the Titanic tragedy led to mass casualty protocols still used today. The first book of its kind on one of the most famous events in human history, Dead in the Water explores how we face the void and accept (or refuse to accept) death in extreme conditions.
Description supplied by the publisher.
We haven’t read Dead in the Water: The Lost Passengers of the Titanic yet. When our review goes up, it will replace this page.
