Age of Cunard by Daniel A. Butler

The Cunard Line changed the world. It transformed the flow of European emigrants to America from a trickle into a flood, altering the face and character of two continents; at the same time it propelled shipbuilding and engineering to feats of construction and production that had never before been imagined, spurring them to become the driving forces behind the dynamics of Victorian Britain, ushering in an era of social, economic and political progress on a scale never before seen. It would be an exciting, sometimes tumultuous, occasionally troubled, story. The Line would face showdowns with rivals at home and abroad, some explicitly dedicated to driving Cunard from the North Atlantic. It would endure the carnage of two World Wars, and in the Second provide the Allies with a margin of victory in Europe. And when, with the dawning of the air age, the demand for the services that Cunard had provided for more than a century ceased to exist, the company successfully reinvented itself to adap