Born Prince Albert Edward and known as Bertie, the future King Edward VII had a well-earned reputation for debauchery. A notorious gambler, glutton and womanizer, he preferred the company of wastrels and courtesans to the dreary life of the Victorian court. His own mother considered him a lazy halfwit, temperamentally unfit to succeed her. When he ascended to the throne in 1901, at age fifty-nine, expectations were low. Yet by the time he died nine...

"A product of Anglo-American capitalism, built by a generation that had never known trauma and was bored by its own prosperity and success, the Titanic set sail into a world that was about to change forever. Modernity was shaking the class system, the Industrial Revolution was creating new kinds of wealth, and revolutionary fervor would lead to The Great War. Exploring the infamous disaster from the perspectives of six of her first-class passengers--a...