This Ship Still Sails
By Daisy Maryles -- Publishers Weekly, 4/23/2001
The dramatic story of the greatest naval disaster in American history, the July 30, 1945, torpedoing of the naval cruiser Indianapolis—a tragedy in which only 316 of the 1,200 men aboard survived—has spawned a second bestseller so far in 2001. Doug Stanton's In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors has 162,000 copies in print after six trips to press; first printing was 55,000 copies. Publisher Holt has the author on a 22-city tour that begins today in Chicago; the book will be featured on the Today show on the anniversary of the sinking. Back in January, another bestseller on the subject, Abandon Ship: The Death of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, was on the PW charts for two weeks, and HarperCollins reported 105,000 copies in print (See Behind the Bestsellers, Jan. 22). That book was originally published by Henry Holt in 1958, when it spent four months on the bestseller charts.
