By RICHARD PYLE
.c The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) - Walter Lord, who went from writing obscure tax manuals for businessmen to literary fame as the best-selling author of ``A Night to Remember,'' a gripping account of the sinking of the Titanic, is dead at 84.

Lord died in his Manhattan home on Sunday after a long struggle with Parkinson's disease, according to Evan Thomas, a Newsweek editor and close friend.

A lifelong bachelor, Lord leaves no survivors, but ``a ton of friends,'' Thomas said.

Some of those date back to World War II when Lord worked in the London headquarters of the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency.

While Lord wrote a dozen successful books on such subjects as Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway, the Alamo, polar exploration and the civil rights struggle, he was best known for the 1955 book on the Titanic.

Using techniques learned in researching tax issues, he tracked down some 60 survivors of the 1912 maritime disaster and turned their stories into a dramatic, minute-by-minute account of how the ``unsinkable'' British liner sank on its maiden voyage after colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

``He was a pioneer in bringing journalistic narrative to history,'' Thomas said. ``It's a common technique now, but it was anything but commonplace in the 1950s.''

Lord was born in Baltimore, Md., on Oct. 8, 1917, graduated from Princeton University in 1939 and joined the OSS in London in 1942. He was the agency's secretariat when the war ended in 1945.

After the war he attended Yale Law School, where friends included his roommate, future U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and William Scranton, future governor of Pennsylvania.

While working as an advertising copywriter and collaborating with tax expert J.K. Lasser on writing tax manuals, Lord broadened his literary horizon in 1954 with ``The Fremantle Diary,'' about a British military officer observing the American Civil War.

``A Night to Remember'' was published the next year, and was an instant literary success.

Lord theorized that the Titanic tragedy was pushed to history's back pages by the two world wars.

``It came to seem for a while unimportant and rather trivial to study the Titanic,'' he said.

After all his research, Lord said he could see the ship in his head - ``everything - what the different rooms look like, the people smoking in the lifeboats.''

Author Steven Biel credited Lord with interpreting the disaster as a defining moment that ushered in the ``Age of Uncertainty.''

``In the creation of the Titanic myth there were two defining moments: 1912, of course, and 1955,'' Biel wrote.

``A Night to Remember'' was turned into a well-received film in 1958, and Lord later served as a consultant for the 1998 epic ``Titanic.'' When it won the Academy Award for best picture, director James Cameron held up the Oscar and declared it ``a night to remember.''

The film's success put ``A Night to Remember'' - never out of print - back on the best-seller list.

Thomas said Lord pioneered in literature again when he went to Japan to meet pilots who had attacked Pearl Harbor, for his 1957 book, ``Day of Infamy.''

``Interviewing the enemy - nobody had done that before,'' Thomas said.

Later Lord books included ``The Good Years,'' in 1960, an account of America in the early 20th century; ``A Time to Stand,'' about the Alamo, 1961; ``Peary to the Pole,'' 1963; ``The Past That Would Not Die,'' the story of James Meredith's integration of the University of Mississippi, 1965; ``Incredible Victory,'' the turning point of the Pacific War at Midway, 1967; ``The Dawn's Early Light,'' a 1972 book on the British torching of the White House in 1814; ``Lonely Vigil,'' about World War II coastwatchers in the Pacific, 1977, and ``The Miracle of Dunkirk,'' 1982.

In 1986, Lord wrote his last book, ``The Night Lives On,'' subtitled ``Further Thoughts and Reflections About the Titanic.''

Also a best-seller, it explored various aspects of the disaster and even revised the earlier book's account of Titanic musicians playing the hymn ``Autumn'' as the ship was sinking. Lord wrote that it was more likely a popular waltz with a similar name.

He was an avid photographer and a collector of political campaign buttons, famous front pages, civil war prints and ``Titanic ephemera,'' Thomas said.

The latter included every known book on the subject and mementoes from the ship, all destined for the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England.

A memorial service is planned for June 10 at the New York Historical Society