Most impressive, however, is Von Drehle's minute-by-minute, sometimes second-by-second account of the fire itself and the desperate efforts to escape it. You'll find yourself in the building with the people you now know so well, thinking along with them about what to do as the flames draw closer. And it will stay with you.
Beyond his story-telling skills, Von Drehle shows a confident and expert touch in putting the fire in its historical context. Here we see Tammany Hall leaders grasping the opportunity to reinvent themselves and their oft-disgraced political machine into a champion of the working poor. And you'll learn how New York City political legends Robert Wagner and Al Smith crafted their reform agendas and how the movement helped to spawn FDR's New Deal.
Read this book; and buy some for your friends and relatives. They all will thank you.
This is a riverting work of narrative history that also places the events described in the larger context of the societal changes that followed. The Triangle fire came a little more than a year after a major labor uprising among the garment workers that marked an important elevation in their status. The story of this strike is one of the main themes leading up to the tragedy; the other is a picture of Tammany Hall, the machine that controlled New York politics for generations.
In the wake of the disaster, there was an outpouring of grief and sympathy and support for the survivors...and very real fears that the larger lessons of the disaster would be forgotten. Although a criminal trial against the Triangle's owners many not have produced the moral victory many had hoped, the strong currents of change flowing through society could not be stopped. Von Drehle documents how Tammany, realizing its survival was at stake, shifted from a force of reaction to a force of change. Although Tamany policeman had harassed and beaten participants in the 1909 strike, reformers and politicians, including Al Smith, Robert Wagner and Frances Perkins, would go on to accomplish significant reforms in workplace safety conditions--and with Tammany's backing. Ultimately, Von Drehle argues, this wave of change peaked with the rise of urban liberalism and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.
In Von Drehle's gifted storytelling, the lost world of almost a century ago lives again. Read this book, and better understand how that world of yesterday shaped the one we live in today.
This book beautifully explains how this fire forced these three sides together. It is also very dramatic in its telling of the lives of those who perished and those who lived. It is packed with interesting facts and asides that reinforces how little things change.
One interesting fact is the origin of the word "sweatshop." It was not a hot place where workers toiled for low wages, as we know it, but rather a term applied to making workers take less than they were told they would be paid by sweating out concessions from them. A worker might be told he was to be paid so much per dozen hems, but then be charged for needles, thread, the machine use, and the first dozen where just for trial. It makes me think of the relationship between Wal-Mart and its suppliers, that have been detailed in recent press articles.
This book also shows how political parties that cannot read the mood of the electorate, are doomed to fail.
A great read, don't miss this.