Triangle: The Fire that Changed America
Author: David Von Drehl
On March 25, 1911, as workers were getting ready to leave for the day, a fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York's Greenwich Village. Within minutes it spread to consume the building's upper three stories. With ladders too short for a rescue, firemen had to watch in horror, along with hundreds on the street, as desperate workers jumped to their deaths. The final toll was 146 people-123 of them women. It was the worst industrial disaster in New York City history until 9/11.
The New York Times
For a historian of New York, the dreadful sight of trapped World Trade Center workers leaping to their deaths on Sept. 11 summoned up the horrible image of trapped seamstresses, hair and clothing ablaze, plunging from the Triangle shirtwaist factory on March 25, 1911. David Von Drehle was at work on Triangle: The Fire That Changed America when the attack came, and for a time its appalling parallels stopped him cold. We can be thankful that he carried on, because he has given us an enthralling chronicle of that distant and very different disaster, which left its own profound mark on the city and taught lessons that we are badly in need of remembering. — Mike Wallace
The Washington Post
Von Drehle ably describes the growth of the garment industry, the lives of its immigrant work force, the politics of early 20th-century New York, and the 1909 strike. But he truly excels in telling the harrowing story of the fire itself. Two gripping chapters put the reader inside the Triangle factory, as the fire spreads with awesome speed from the pile of garment scraps where it began, taking all its victims within just a half-hour. Von Drehle shows how clear thinking, decisive action, physical strength and luck saved many, including the owners, while others were doomed by paralyzing terror, trying to save colleagues, a locked exit door, the poorly constructed fire escape that collapsed during the inferno, or sheer chance. Von Drehle's reconstruction of the fire is reminiscent of Norman McClean's Young Men and Fire, the classic account of what it is like to face a raging fire, and the split-second events that separate life from death. — Joshua B. Freeman
NY Times Sunday Book Review
As David Von Drehle makes clear in his outstanding history, Triangle, the overwhelmingly young, female victims of the fire -- at least 123 were women, and of these at least 64 were teenagers -- were betrayed by the greed of their employers, by the indifference of the city's political bosses, by an entire matrix of civic neglect and corruption. … Von Drehle, a reporter at The Washington Post, has written what is sure to become the definitive account of the fire. — Kevin Baker
Publishers Weekly
It was a profitable business in a modern fireproof building heralded as a model of efficiency. Yet the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City became the deadliest workplace in American history when fire broke out on the premises on March 25, 1911. Within about 15 minutes the blaze killed 146 workers-most of them immigrant Jewish and Italian women in their teens and early 20s. Though most workers on the eighth and 10th floors escaped, those on the ninth floor were trapped behind a locked exit door. As the inferno spread, the trapped workers either burned to death inside the building or jumped to their deaths on the sidewalk below. Journalist Von Drehle (Lowest of the Dead: Inside Death Row and Deadlock: The Inside Story of America's Closest Election) recounts the disaster-the worst in New York City until September 11, 2001-in passionate detail. He explains the sociopolitical context in which the fire occurred and the subsequent successful push for industry reforms, but is at his best in his moment-by-moment account of the fire. He describes heaps of bodies on the sidewalk, rows of coffins at the makeshift morgue where relatives identified charred bodies by jewelry or other items, and the scandalous manslaughter trial at which the Triangle owners were acquitted of all charges stemming from the deaths. Von Drehle's engrossing account, which emphasizes the humanity of the victims and the theme of social justice, brings one of the pivotal and most shocking episodes of American labor history to life. Photos not seen by PW. Agent: Esther Newberg. (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Edna Boardman - KLIATT
To quote from the review of the audiobook in KLIATT, May 2004: The legendary fire that killed 146 in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York, March 25, 1911, "grew geometrically in the space of a few seconds." The factory was packed with tables that limited workers' movement and with waste receptacles that contained flammables ripe for the match head or cigarette stub. Its narrow staircases ended in locked doors, and the fire department's ladders were not long enough to reach the windows against which the screaming women crowded. The flames were brought under control within half an hour, but the fire's effects have reverberated through American development. In an impressive piece of research and writing, Von Drehle opens up the story, illuminating the legal, political and cultural setting in which the fire occurred. Tammany Hall ruled New York for the sake of the wealthy, ships daily brought hundreds of immigrants escaping Europe's pogroms and poverty, and factory-made clothing was replacing traditional homemade. He details the fire's setting, the persons involved at all levels, the trial that exonerated the owners, Max Blank and Isaac Harris, and the profound attitude change that put the government into social programs. A cultural history masterpiece. KLIATT Codes: SA*—Exceptional book, recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2003, Grove Press, 340p. illus. notes. bibliog. index., Ages 15 to adult.
Library Journal
The tragic conflagration at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in March 1911 resulted in the deaths of 123 women (most of them young immigrants), caused widespread public outrage, and set in motion a wave of reform. Drehle's vivid retelling of this horrifying event begins with the strike that immediately preceded it and then examines the terrible fire, the unsuccessful prosecution of the factory owners, and the fight to prevent similar tragedies in the future. Drehle, a reporter for the Washington Post and author of such investigative books as Lowest of the Dead: Inside Death Row, utilizes the vast amount of documentation surrounding the tragedy and some newly discovered court transcripts to re-create the fire and its legislative aftermath, plus immigrant life and labor conditions at the time. The story of this disaster can never be told too often and has rarely been told this well. Recommended for academic and public libraries of all sizes, even those who already own Leon Stein's classic The Triangle Fire. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/03.]-Theresa McDevitt, Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Von Drehle has embedded the intense, moving tale of the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in a fascinating, meticulously documented account of a crucial period in U.S. history. In addition to using an impressive list of secondary sources, the author has drawn heavily on newspaper articles, author Leon Stine's interviews with survivors, and trial transcripts. In a short prologue, he provides a poignant account of stunned, grieving relatives trying to identify burned bodies. To show why the tragedy occurred, he then goes back two years to the beginning of the 1909 general strike. The stifling, dingy tenements and the horrific conditions of the factories where immigrant workers toiled for 84-hour workweeks are described in evocative detail. Stories of the hardships they left behind in Italy and Eastern Europe contribute to the portraits of the victims and villains. Readers unfamiliar with Tammany Hall, the Progressive movement, or the rise of trade unions benefit from clear, concise background information. The account of the fire, the investigation, and the trial are both heartbreaking and enraging. The courtroom drama of defense attorney Max Steuer brazenly defending the factory owners overshadows any modern comparison. After concluding with the announcement of the trial verdict, the author provides an epilogue covering the final years of the key figures. An appendix gives the first complete list of victims. Eight black-and-white photos are included.-Kathy Tewell, Chantilly Regional Library, VA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A vivid recounting of the 1911 blaze that until the World Trade Center attack was the worst workplace disaster in New York history. On March 25 of that year, a fire broke out at the Triangle Waist Company in Greenwich Village. In a half-hour, 146 people were killed, 123 of them women. Washington Post journalist Drehle (Among the Lowest of the Dead, 1995) fleshes out the social and political background to the conditions that made the tragedy inevitable. Abysmal pay and harassment for petty work violations had prompted a massive waist-workers' strike in New York the year before. Nor was the fire unusual or unforeseen; one historian estimated that at the time, a hundred accidents occurred in American workplaces each day. The largest blouse-making operation in New York, the Triangle sweatshop employed 500 or more workers, mostly Jewish and Italian, who toiled on the upper floors just beyond the reach of fire department ladders. The victims' doom was sealed when a rickety fire escape collapsed, and they couldn't open a door kept locked because the owners feared employee theft. Though the owners were acquitted of manslaughter charges, the outrage that swept the city led to changes in laws concerning workplace safety and the rights of labor. Reaction to the Triangle disaster also foreshadowed a national political realignment as urban Democrats became the shock troops of FDR's coalition. Drehle enhances his narrative with colorful portraits of principal players, including flamboyant defense attorney Max Steuer; Charles Whitman, the politically ambitious district attorney of New York; Tammany Hall boss Charles Murphy; and his Albany lieutenants Al Smith and Robert F. Wagner, who staved offsocialist insurgency by passing 25 workplace safety bills in 1912. More remarkably, the author manages to piece together from news accounts and a long-lost trial transcript the lives and aspirations of the accident's victims. Compelling, in-depth look at a tragedy that deserves to be better remembered. (8-page b&w insert, not seen) Agent: Esther Newberg/ICM
Table of Contents:
| Prologue: Misery Lane | 1 | |
| 1 | Spirit of the Age | 6 |
| 2 | The Triangle | 35 |
| 3 | Uprising | 55 |
| 4 | The Golden Land | 87 |
| 5 | Inferno | 116 |
| 6 | Three Minutes | 139 |
| 7 | Fallout | 171 |
| 8 | Reform | 194 |
| 9 | Trial | 219 |
| Epilogue | 259 | |
| Appendix | 269 | |
| Notes | 285 | |
| Notes on Sources | 317 | |
| Selected Bibliography | 321 | |
| Acknowledgements | 327 | |
| Index | 329 |
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Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism
Author: Kevin Phillips
The bestselling author reveals how the U.S. financial sector has hijacked our economy and put America's global future at risk
In American Theocracy, Kevin Phillips warned us of the perilous interaction of debt, financial recklessness, and the increasing cost of scarce oil. The current housing and mortgage debacle is proof once more of Phillips's prescience, and only the first harbinger of a national crisis. In Bad Money, Phillips describes the consequences of our misguided economic policies, our mounting debt, our collapsing housing market, our threatened oil, and the end of American domination of world markets. America's current challenges (and failures) run striking parallels to the decline of previous leading world economic powers-especially the Dutch and British. Global overreach, worn-out politics, excessive debt, and exhausted energy regimes are all chilling signals that the United States is crumbling as the world superpower.
"Bad money" refers to a new phenomenon in wayward megafinance-the emergence of a U.S. economy that is globally dependent and dominated by hubris-driven financial services. Also "bad" are the risk miscalculations and strategic abuses of new multitrillion-dollar products such as asset-backed securities and the lure of buccaneering vehicles like hedge funds. Finally, the U.S. dollar has been turned into bad money as it has weakened and become vulnerable to the world's other currencies. In all these ways, "bad" finance has failed the American people and pointed U.S. capitalism toward a global crisis. Bad Money is the perfect follow- up to Phillips's last book, whose dire warnings are now proving frighteningly accurate.
The New York Times - Daniel Gross
Bad Money is perfectly timed for the present, as the foul stench of moldering debt and American decline lingers in the concrete canyons of Manhattan…Phillips is an entertaining writer. His prose is full of jabs and one-two combinations that keep things moving briskly.
Dale Farris - Library Journal
Longtime political and economic commentator Phillips continues the theme of his American Theocracy(2006)-also narrated by Scott Brick (
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