Dark Tide
The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919
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- €10.99
Publisher Description
“The definitive account of America’s most fascinating and surreal disaster.”—John Marr, San Francisco Bay Guardian
“Narrated with gusto…[Puleo’s] enthusiasm for a little-known catastrophe is infectious.”—The New Yorker
“Compelling…Puleo has done justice to a gripping historical story.”—Ralph Ranalli, Boston Globe
A 100th anniversary edition with a new afterword of the only adult book on one of the odder disasters in US history—documenting the greed, disregard for poor immigrants, and lack of safety standards that led to it
Around noon on January 15, 1919, a group of firefighters were playing cards in Boston’s North End when they heard a tremendous crash. One firefighter jumped up from his chair to look out a window—“Oh my God!” he shouted to the other men, “Run!”
A 50-foot-tall steel tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses had just collapsed on Boston’s waterfront, disgorging its contents in a 15-foot-high wave that traveled at 35 miles per hour. It demolished wooden homes, even the brick fire station. The number of dead wasn’t known for days.
Dark Tide tells the story of the molasses flood in its full historical context. Tracing the era from the tank’s construction in 1915 through the multiyear lawsuit that followed the disaster, and drawing from long-lost court documents, fire department records, and newspaper accounts, Stephen Puleo uses the gripping drama of the molasses flood to examine the sweeping changes brought about by World War I, Prohibition, the anarchist movement, immigration, and the expanding role of big business in society.
It’s also a chronicle of the courage of ordinary people, from the firemen caught in an unimaginable catastrophe to Judge Hugh Ogden, the soldier-lawyer who presided over the lawsuit against USIA with heroic impartiality.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this volume, Puleo, a contributor to American History magazine, sets out to determine whether the collapse of a molasses tank that sent a tidal wave of 2.3 million gallons of the sticky liquid through Boston's North End and killed 21 people was the work of Italian anarchists or due to negligence by the tank's owner, United States Industrial Alcohol. Getting into the minds of the major players in the disaster USIA suits, victims, witnesses, North End residents, politicians he re-creates not only the scene but also the social, political and economic environments of the time that made the disaster more than just an industrial accident. While the collapse's aftermath is tragic, the story itself is not exactly gripping. More interesting are the tidbits of Boston's and America's history, such as the importance of molasses to all U.S. war efforts up to and including WWI, which Puleo uses to put the tank collapse in the context of a very complex time in U.S. history. The most striking aspect of this tale is the timeliness of the topics it touches on. Describing Americans being persecuted because of their ethnicity, a sagging economy boosted by war, and terrorism on U.S. soil that results in anti-immigration laws and deportations, Puleo could just as easily be writing about current events as about events in 1919. Overall, this is another piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is Boston's long and rich history. Photos.
