Triangle: The Fire that Changed America

$22.99

by David Von Drehle
Format: Paperback


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. Firemen who arrived at the scene were unable to rescue those trapped inside: their ladders simply weren’t tall enough. People on the street watched in horror as desperate workers jumped to their deaths. The final toll was 146 people – 123 of them women. It was the worst workplace disaster in New York City History.


David Von Drehle orchestrates these events into a drama rich in suspense and filled with memorable characters: the tight-fisted “shirtwaist kings” Max Blanck and Isaac Harris; Charles F. Murphy, the shrewd kingmaker of Tammany Hall; blue-blooded activists like Anne Morgan, daughter of J. P. Morgan; and reformers Frances Perkins and Al Smith. Most powerfully, he puts a human face on the men and women who died on March25. Triangle is an immensely moving account of the hardships of New York City life in the early part of the twentieth century, and how this event transformed politics and gave rise to urban liberalism.


“An enthralling chronicle of (the Triangle) disaster, which left its own profound mark on the city and taught lessons that we are badly in need of remembering.”
-Mike Wallace, The New York Times Book Review

In stock

SKU: 002872 Category:
triangle the fire that changed america 520 1
Triangle: The Fire that Changed America

In stock

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