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beammey's review against another edition
5.0
5 out of 5 stars. I really enjoyed this book. It was heart wrenching at moments, but I think it had to be. This was a serious time and a lot of people died and it's one way to make sure the story and what happened stays with you and isn't just forgotten to history. Albert did an amazing job and I loved the photos because it made me connect to the story even more. I would recommend this to anyone who likes history. Amazing book. Well done.
tburchell97's review
5.0
Excellent book to read while studying industrial revolution, my girls are in 8th grade and we had great discussions during it.
jessalynn_librarian's review
4.0
I read this one in two sittings, a week or two apart. Once you pick it up, it's an aborbing read as much for as its horrors as its way of making history come alive. But it's not exactly cheerful reading for a lunch break, so it sat around my living room for a while before getting picked up again.
I'd argue that the story isn't as much about the Triangle Fire as it is about social conditions that led up to the fire and reforms attempted in the aftermath of the fire. The horrifying events of the fire really only take up about a chapter - it was a quick and deadly.
But to explain how something like this happens, Marrin takes us back through history to set up the day of the fire. He talks about why so many southern Italians and Eastern European Jews came to New York at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, why they worked the jobs they did, and how they lived. He describes changes in the manufacture of clothing, the advent of new technologies and changes in fashion that led to tenement-based sweatshops and later larger operations like the Triangle Waist Factory.
Having set the scene for why there were so many young women working long hours in these factories, he layers in issues like workplace safety - the practice of locking-in workers to deterr late-comers and prevent workers from leaving, the fact that fire-prevention devices had been invented (like overhead sprinklers) but that factory owners weren't required to use them. In fact, it was more cost-effective to let buildings burn (and the workers in them - there were always more willing to take the jobs) and collect insurance than to take pains to prevent fires. The scene is also set with an account of the garment workers' strike prior to the fire
Following the fire, Marrin takes us through changes in politics and policies in New York related to the garment industry - some of the immediate aftermath shows the changes brought about by the fire, but the further we get into the 20th century, the less the information seems relevant to the fire (particularly the discussion of organized crime). The final chapter briefly covers how our clothes are made today and the fact that Triangle-like conditions still exist in sweatshops.
These present-day accounts are a chilling footnote to the story, but here Marrin's tone becomes a bit more opinionated, rather than letting the facts speak for themselves. Throughout the book, in fact, he's prone to a rather grandiose tone that frequently took me out of the story. The facts he presents are gripping enough without the use of over-wrought language.
Audience is a tricky question for this one - I would say middle school and high school, depending on the reader's comfort level with occasionally gruesome descriptions. Because the book is so chock-full of different pieces of history, it could be useful to kids researching anything from immigration to working conditions to women's rights, or for readers interested in the context of the fire.
I'd argue that the story isn't as much about the Triangle Fire as it is about social conditions that led up to the fire and reforms attempted in the aftermath of the fire. The horrifying events of the fire really only take up about a chapter - it was a quick and deadly.
But to explain how something like this happens, Marrin takes us back through history to set up the day of the fire. He talks about why so many southern Italians and Eastern European Jews came to New York at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, why they worked the jobs they did, and how they lived. He describes changes in the manufacture of clothing, the advent of new technologies and changes in fashion that led to tenement-based sweatshops and later larger operations like the Triangle Waist Factory.
Having set the scene for why there were so many young women working long hours in these factories, he layers in issues like workplace safety - the practice of locking-in workers to deterr late-comers and prevent workers from leaving, the fact that fire-prevention devices had been invented (like overhead sprinklers) but that factory owners weren't required to use them. In fact, it was more cost-effective to let buildings burn (and the workers in them - there were always more willing to take the jobs) and collect insurance than to take pains to prevent fires. The scene is also set with an account of the garment workers' strike prior to the fire
Following the fire, Marrin takes us through changes in politics and policies in New York related to the garment industry - some of the immediate aftermath shows the changes brought about by the fire, but the further we get into the 20th century, the less the information seems relevant to the fire (particularly the discussion of organized crime). The final chapter briefly covers how our clothes are made today and the fact that Triangle-like conditions still exist in sweatshops.
These present-day accounts are a chilling footnote to the story, but here Marrin's tone becomes a bit more opinionated, rather than letting the facts speak for themselves. Throughout the book, in fact, he's prone to a rather grandiose tone that frequently took me out of the story. The facts he presents are gripping enough without the use of over-wrought language.
Audience is a tricky question for this one - I would say middle school and high school, depending on the reader's comfort level with occasionally gruesome descriptions. Because the book is so chock-full of different pieces of history, it could be useful to kids researching anything from immigration to working conditions to women's rights, or for readers interested in the context of the fire.
nerfherder86's review
4.0
Excellent nonfiction book about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911. I've always found this period of history, and this particular event, fascinating, and I really enjoyed this comprehensive look at both. Thoroughly researched and footnoted, with liberal use of photographs on nearly every page, this book covers much before and after the fire, giving the history of Jewish and Russian immigration to New York City (why they left, not just that they came in droves), explaining the living and working conditions of the poor in the "dumbbell tenements" (I hadn't ever heard that term before, describing the shape of the apartment buildings that had an air shaft between them), and how the NYC garment industry rose up so fast and loose. This background is well done for middle grade and up readers, giving them the facts they need to place the events in context. Then comes the description of the fire, done very matter-of-factly, not in a sensational way, and the book goes on to describe the reforms that came about as a result of the fire. But I liked that it didn't end there; the last chapter finished up the history of the NYC garment industry as the mob and the Mafia infiltrated; then explained how cheap foreign imports have totally changed the industry, and ended with descriptions of modern day sweatshops in developing countries--even in 2010, one hundred years later, women died in a factory fire under some of the same circumstances as those Triangle girls, which gives an eerie full-circle aspect to the story of the fire. If you're thinking this sounds boring, do not, because the book is very well written and far from "dry."
margaretann84's review against another edition
3.0
I found it interesting, but not as much about the fire as it was about tenement and immigrant life and the struggle for workers' rights in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
tmaluck's review against another edition
4.0
I was initially skeptical of the historical, "let's talk about how these workers got to America before we discuss New York" approach, but the origins of America's Jewish and Italian populations were too interesting to ignore. The wide scope has a lot to say, though it does delay the triangle fire's placement in the book for a long while.