Collision Course

The Classic Story of the Collision of the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm

By: Alvin Moscow

Narrated by: Mel Foster

One of the largest, fastest, and most beautiful ships in the world, the Andrea Doria was en route to New York from Italy. Departing from the United States was the much smaller Stockholm. On the foggy night of July 25, 1956, 53 miles southeast of Nantucket, the Stockholm sliced through the Doria's steel hull. Within minutes, the sea was pouring into the Italian liner. Eleven hours later, she capsized and sank into the ocean.

Associated Press journalist Alvin Moscow recounts the heroic, rapid response of other ships - which averted a catastrophe of the same scale as that of the Titanic - and the official inquest. Moscow delivers a fact-filled, fascinating drama of how a supposedly unsinkable ship ended up at the bottom of the sea.

©2004 Alvin Moscow (P)2016 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Fantastic read!

I had previously read the book many years ago, and throughly enjoyed it again, but even more appreciated the opportunity to hear about the subsequent dives and status of the ship .

Thorough Account of the Tragedy

This was an interesting account of the tragic collision of the Andrea Doria luxury liner and the Stockholm. Author Moscow relates the events in a factual manner after having done a great deal of research. It is well written and a look into a bygone era. He spoke with many crewmembers and some passengers and the human stories are the most interesting part of the book. The aftermath is covered as well, the trial hearings and state of the wreck. A definitive account of this tragedy. Narration was documentary style.

Littered with unnecessary snide and hateful asides

I've had this book in my library for a while but decided to give it a re-listen after quite a few years. I was so surprised by the author's incessant stream of gross, hateful, and humiliating jabs at the victims of this deadly shipwreck that I had to double check exactly when the book was even written (2004).
Alvin Moscow takes particular issue with women, and derisively mocks them, frames them as feeble minded, weak-willed, foolish, cowardly, and greedy every chance he gets. It makes no sense in the context of the re-telling of this harrowing event, thoroughly disrupts the flow of the action, and is immensely off-putting.
He also has an axe to grind with Catholics, especially when presenting the third class Italian immigrants as useless religious fanatics unable to do anything but make a nuisance of themselves. Finally, Moscow clearly doesn't like overweight people. He wastes countless blocks of story telling to detail how the small lithe folks are perpetual heroes but the fat slobs are burdens to all around them.
I've listened to three separate books on the sinking of the Andrea Doria and I can assure you, this is the one to skip. "The Last Voyage of the Andrea Doria' by Greg King and Penny Wilson is infinitely superior.
I'm generally not some pearl-clutching social justice warrior, but in the hundreds of non-fiction disaster books I've read, I have never seen an author spend so much time disrupting their own book because they can't control the impulse to take potshots at wholly innocent people in a life or death battle to survive a terrifying disaster. Moscow should be ashamed. His hate is far uglier than the myriad faults he sees in so many others.