SOURCE: “Ship of Fools,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, November 24, 1996, p. 6.

In the following review, Heeger posts a positive assessment of Every Man for Himself.

Its very name described its lordliness on the sea. So vast its passengers got lost on it, so strong it was thought invincible, the Titanic remains one of the most compelling images of prideful folly in modern maritime history. Who doesn't know the story of its maiden voyage and midnight meeting with an iceberg, chandeliers blazing, orchestra tootling out ragtime? Two hours later, mortally wounded, the great double-hulled wonder heeled over and sank, sucking 1,500 people to watery graves.

Ever since, the facts have been hashed and rehashed, the 1912 voyage re-created in articles, books, documentaries and feature and television films. We can't seem to get enough: how many millions of rivets went into that hull and how much oak paneling and inlaid mother...