Rating: 
Summary: More than just about a fire
Review: "Triangle" described the 1911 fire at the Triangle Waist Company where 146 workers perished, which was New York City's worst workplace disaster until the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Von Drehle is a gifted writer and makes history come alive in his retelling of this fire that killed with such swiftness: The blaze did its deadly work in less than 15 minutes from start to finish.
I bought this book because I have long been interested in stories of infamous fires (beginning as a 10-year old reading a now out of print book about the Coacoanut Grove fire). Thus, one of the aspects of the book I found personally somewhat disappointing is that it got off to a rather slow start, with the first 115 pages devoted to a history of such topics as immigration in New York City in the early 1900s, Tammany Hall, and the strike by shirtwaist workers. I understand that Von Drehle's motivation by providing this history was to place the Triangle Fire in the larger cultural context so as to render understandable how such neglect of safety issues was tolerated in those days. Providing this detail thus makes the book educational rather than sensationalistic, and I found myself learning a lot. However, the bottom line is that I bought the book because I wanted to learn about a famous fire and not particularly about the labor history of New York in the 1900s.
That having been said, it is a testament to Von Drehle's writing ability that he was able to make what could have been dry history riveting enough to keep me going through 115 pages until the part on the fire began. Through painstaking research of original sources, he was able to find enough detail about individual workers so that the reader sees their deaths for the personal tragedies they were and not just another workplace statistic. His prose at times was beautiful and poignant. Take, for example, this sentence (p. 138) describing the recollection of one of the survivors of the fire: "...he saw 'five or six girls falling from the windows.' They seemed to start out just a few feet below him, barely out of reach, but then they dropped into space and got smaller and smaller until the world, for them, came to a sudden end." This book serves an important function of making sure that the victims of the Triangle Fire are not forgotten. More important, the book provides a vivid reminder that the safeguards most Americans enjoy in their workplaces today to ensure that such a disaster never happens again came with a terrible price.
Rating: 
Summary: What Caused the Fire, and What the Fire Caused
Review: Before 11 September 2001, the worst workplace disaster in New York City was the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Greenwich Village on 25 March 1911. As recounted in a riveting history, _Triangle: The Fire That Changed America_ (Atlantic Monthly Press) by David Von Drehle, the fire was caused not just by a careless cigarette, but by social, industrial, and labor forces summed to that point, and true to the subtitle, it changed those forces ever afterward. Anyone studying the economics and history of twentieth century America needs to know the prominence of the sweatshops, but as Von Drehle points out, we are now once again concerned about the sweatshops from where our clothes issue (they just don't happen to predominate in New York anymore). And though after Triangle there were important safety laws imposed in New York, there are still factory disasters happening in the equivalent of sweatshops in other parts of the world.Ironically, the Triangle factory made shirtwaists, which were the women's blouses of the time, and they were something of a sartorial liberation for women. It was a practical garment, with no hoops or corsets, and yet it was fashionable enough for the Gibson Girl. The book covers the lengthy strike at Triangle of 1909, but the strike was not about safety, just hours and pay. Von Drehle shows that there had already been factory buildings successfully protected from fire. Automatic sprinklers, firewalls, and fireproof doors and stairways were, from the 1880s, standard in some factories. The Triangle owners paid lots for insurance, and little for safety. The building itself was promoted as fireproof, and it proved essentially to be, but the contents were certainly not. There were about 250 workers in the building, and as they attempted to escape, each fire hazard took its toll. A door to the rear stairway was locked, for instance, because the owners insisted that workers use only one stairway. This ensured that before leaving the building, everyone could be checked for goods smuggled out. Crowds mobbed shut other doors which opened inwards. The account of the fire is vivid and scary. 140 people died in the fire, 123 of them women. About a hundred of the deaths were those who fell or jumped. The owners were tried for manslaughter. Van Drehle has uncovered a lost transcript of the trial, which focused on the locked doors. On the stand, one of the owners stressed the importance of having the door locked to prevent theft, but when pressed to state how much loss there had been to theft, he admitted that it was less than $25 a year. The owners were deemed not guilty, and gained $60,000 in insurance payments. The resulting public outcry provided a new impetus for workplace safety, creating rules that are in force even today, like the ones requiring outward swinging doors. Van Drehle shows that even more importantly, it began to be taken for granted that a progressive government ought to be regulating such matters. Tammany Hall came around to protecting the workers, and from this change grew such philosophies as the New Deal. _Triangle_ compellingly tells the story of the building's fire, but even better, it covers the stories of the women workers involved in the disaster, and the changes the fire brought. The fire lasted a horrific ten minutes in 1911, but it has not finished burning yet.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling and Important
Review: Before Sept. 11, 2001, this was the worst workplace disaster in American history -- and in terms of lasting impact on our nation, it may well have been as significant. Von Drehle shows how the ghastly deaths of dozens of young Jewish and Italian immigrant women in an inferno that lasted only minutes changed forever the way we think about labor in this country. The political accommodations that it forced would end sweatshop America. Behind the politics is an event of unimaginable horror, re-created with restraint but not a single pulled punch.
Rating:
Summary: The Fire in a Rich Context
Review: David von Drehle has taken the tragic events of March 25, 1911 and set them in the larger framework of their place in history and come up with the powerful book, Triangle (The Fire That Changed America). The author explores Tammany Hall, the Progressive Movement, immigration to America, the lives of the poor and the rich, and many other topics to let the reader fully understand the impact this fire had on the political and social life of the city and, eventually, the country. The story is peopled with socialites, like the daughter of J. P. Morgan, future leaders of politics, such as Alfred E. Smith, Robert Wagner and, especially, Frances Perkins, and labour leaders, but the narrative comes most fully alive with the stories of the women and men who worked at the Factory itself. The centrepiece of this tale is their struggle on the day of the fire and the author does this episode proud. It is a harrowing tale told brilliantly. A highly recommended book.
Rating:
Summary: A rich picture of America at the start of the century
Review: David von Drehle's "Triangle" brings alive the world of the early 20th century. New York climbs ever higher; the tallest building is 700 ft, and new ten-storey skyscrapers seem to go up every day. Yet another wave of immigrants crashes ashore. Yet another generation of Tammany politicians take them under their wing. The garment industry industrialises. The process moves from piecework in apartments and basements to factory floors, stuck, improbably, on the eighth and ninth and tenth floors of newly-opened fireproof buildings. Factory owners block the 54-hour week. Women strikers are beaten up by hired muscle; the police arrest the strikers (the owners pay Tammany too much for them to do anything else); wealthy socialites bail the women out. In the spring of 1911, a fire took hold in the cut-off fabric in the bins of the Triangle shirtwaist (blouse) company. The company was scientifically organized, with open floors for easier movement of materials from one point to another on the production line (although they didn't yet use that term). Not a square inch of space was wasted, as the useless area under the tables was boarded on either side and turned into bins for wasted scraps of cloth. This scientific approach was what made it possible for the fire to take hold and spread so quickly. It crossed the eighth floor in five minutes and leapt up the airshaft. Within ten minutes, more than 140 ninth-floor workers had died. Almost everyone on both the eighth and the tenth floors survived. Von Drehle describes those fifteen minutes vividly and evocatively. Split-second decisions and luck made the difference between life and death. He brings out the individuality of the victims and how lucky many of them felt to be working in such a relatively well-run factory. And he brings out the horror of those who were unable to save them. The subsequent reaction to the fire and the pressure that finally got laws passed in 1913 to improve workplace safety are both well described. However, the perspective is entirely a New York one. It would have been interesting to have this put in the context of the nationwide Progressive movement, its peak in 1912 (the 1912 Presidential election isn't even mentioned) and its gradual decline. The description of the trial is gripping. Just as in the fire itself, minor strokes of luck made all the difference to the outcome. Von Drehle points out the tragic mistakes made by the prosecution, and the previous and subsequent history of the Triangle owners with fires, particularly fires at the end of the season in March that conveniently destroyed unwanted inventory. He points out how the insurance system did little to encourage fire prevention, and leaves the impression of the owners as people who looked on fire as just another commercial risk (and not necessarily a bad risk at that) as opposed to something life-threatening and to be taken seriously. For me, though, perhaps the most striking image was the description of the investigating police going up to the burnt-out factory after the fire and finding the floors and walls and fixtures still intact. The building was fireproof as advertised. The contents, and tragically the people who worked there, weren't.
Rating:
Summary: Social history at its best
Review: David Von Drehle's "Triangle" is social history at its best. He re-examines this tragic event, which had been relocated to a footnote in history, and places it in a broad historical context. He minimizes the sensational aspects of the tragedy and fully illuminates the social conditions that led to it, as well as workplace and political changes that flowed from it. That is not to say, however, that he does not fully describe the horrors of the fire, the falling bodies, the charred remains or the quirks of fate that saved one victim and doomed another. In the central chapters of the book, his vigorous prose projects the reader right into the heart of the fire. In the first part of the book, Von Drehle examines the victims of the fire that broke out shortly before quitting time at the Triangle Shirtwaist (i.e., blouse) factory on Saturday, March 25, 1911. Who were they? Why did the come to America? Why did they take factory jobs instead of domestic jobs? Where did they live? What did they wear? What did they do in their spare time? Von Drehle brings these people and their neighborhoods to life. Nor does he ignore, or spare, the management. Immigrants and textile workers themselves, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris had risen in the world and owned a series of factories, as they called these sweatshops. Von Drehle details the tactics they used to resistance to unions and break strikes. He describes some of their cost-saving practices (including cheating workers out of earned wages) and provides convincing evidence that they had a history of torching their own workshops at the end of the season to collect the insurance on unsold merchandise. If so, Von Drehle reasons that since the Triangle Fire occurred near the end of the season, Blanck and Harris might have been warehousing unsold garments at the Triangle shop, which would have added fuel and death to the conflagration. Locked doors, bins full of flammable material, insufficient water, a flimsy fire escape and non-existant fire procedures all added to the disaster. When we learn, in the last section of the book, that Blanck and Harris were brought to trial, but then acquitted, we feel righteous indignation along with the survivors and mourners of the victims. Von Drehle's research is extensive; nothing seems to escape his attention. He describes the high-society women who gave emotional and financial support to strikers and then fell away after they realized the anti-capitalist sentiments of some of the leaders. He contrasts the social conditions of the immigrants from Eastern Europe (mainly Jewish) with those from Italy (mainly Catholic), conditions that these immigrants brought with them and that affected their responses to the union movement and to the workplace in general. And, he describes living conditions, including a concise explanation of a typical tenement. The Appendix includes a list and brief description of each of the known victims, apparently the only complete list ever assembled. What a fitting memorial to these workers. This is a engrossing read, well-written and authoritative.
Rating:
Summary: Social history at its best
Review: David Von Drehle's "Triangle" is social history at its best. He re-examines this tragic event, which had been relocated to a footnote in history, and places it in a broad historical context. He minimizes the sensational aspects of the tragedy and fully illuminates the social conditions that led to it, as well as workplace and political changes that flowed from it. That is not to say, however, that he does not fully describe the horrors of the fire, the falling bodies, the charred remains or the quirks of fate that saved one victim and doomed another. In the central chapters of the book, his vigorous prose projects the reader right into the heart of the fire. In the first part of the book, Von Drehle examines the victims of the fire that broke out shortly before quitting time at the Triangle Shirtwaist (i.e., blouse) factory on Saturday, March 25, 1911. Who were they? Why did the come to America? Why did they take factory jobs instead of domestic jobs? Where did they live? What did they wear? What did they do in their spare time? Von Drehle brings these people and their neighborhoods to life. Nor does he ignore, or spare, the management. Immigrants and textile workers themselves, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris had risen in the world and owned a series of factories, as they called these sweatshops. Von Drehle details the tactics they used to resistance to unions and break strikes. He describes some of their cost-saving practices (including cheating workers out of earned wages) and provides convincing evidence that they had a history of torching their own workshops at the end of the season to collect the insurance on unsold merchandise. If so, Von Drehle reasons that since the Triangle Fire occurred near the end of the season, Blanck and Harris might have been warehousing unsold garments at the Triangle shop, which would have added fuel and death to the conflagration. Locked doors, bins full of flammable material, insufficient water, a flimsy fire escape and non-existant fire procedures all added to the disaster. When we learn, in the last section of the book, that Blanck and Harris were brought to trial, but then acquitted, we feel righteous indignation along with the survivors and mourners of the victims. Von Drehle's research is extensive; nothing seems to escape his attention. He describes the high-society women who gave emotional and financial support to strikers and then fell away after they realized the anti-capitalist sentiments of some of the leaders. He contrasts the social conditions of the immigrants from Eastern Europe (mainly Jewish) with those from Italy (mainly Catholic), conditions that these immigrants brought with them and that affected their responses to the union movement and to the workplace in general. And, he describes living conditions, including a concise explanation of a typical tenement. The Appendix includes a list and brief description of each of the known victims, apparently the only complete list ever assembled. What a fitting memorial to these workers. This is a engrossing read, well-written and authoritative.
Rating:
Summary: Horrifying workplace tragedy
Review: David von Drehle's "Triangle", is a shocking, scintillating and extensively researched account of the Triangle Shirt Waist fire of March 1911. In this destructive blaze, the worst New York City workplace disaster until the destruction of the World Trade Center, 146 people perished. von Drehle's book expertly leads us through the social conditions existent at the time which lead up to the Triangle tragedy and the societal changes implemented as a response to this horrible event. At the time of the fire, New York City was a highly desired destination for the thousands of immigrants fleeing their homelands for a better life. Murderous anti Semitic pograms of Eastern Europe and the collapse of agriculture in rural Italy provided a steady stream of impoverished workers for factories. The squalid and desperate conditions under which these "greenhorns" lived was replicated in the deporable conditons of the factories in which they toiled. Fifteen hour days in poorly ventilated sweatshops with five and six year olds also working was the norm. New York politics at the time was run by Tammany Hall, well known for it insatiable appetite for graft. Local politicians turned a deaf ear to the plight of the workers. As a result of the fallout from the fire and the unionization of the garment workers a wave of urban liberalism swept the land lead by FDR and Alfred E. Smith. The social changes created many laws and regulations that govern our workplaces to this day. Unfortunately the owners of the Triangle Waist Company, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris were acquitted of criminal charges specifically locking the doors that served as an escape route for the trapped workers to prevent theft. At least the lives of the 146 that perished marshalled in a new era of fairness and safety in the workplace.
Rating:
Summary: A Gripping Story that Stays with You
Review: David Von Drehle's TRIANGLE: THE FIRE THAT CHANGED AMERICA is an extraordinary example of history and story-telling at its very best. With his smooth writing style and smart feel for detail, Von Drehle quickly draws you into turn-of-the-century New York City. Soon, you start caring about the people of Triangle Shirtwaist factory, as you see what brought them to America and what they endured once they got here. Just as deft are the portraits of others -- from the factory owners and labor activists to politicians -- who each play a role in this tragedy. 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.
Rating:
Summary: A Gripping Story that Stays with You
Review: David Von Drehle's TRIANGLE: THE FIRE THAT CHANGED AMERICA is an extraordinary example of story-telling and history at its very best. With his penetrating writing style and smart feel for detail, Von Drehle quickly draws you into the world of turn-of-the-last-centry New York City. Soon, you start caring deeply about the workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, as you see what brought them to America and what they endured once they got here. Just as deft are the portraits of other key players -- from the factory owners and labor activists to the police, firefighters and politicians. Most impressive and haunting, however, are Von Drehle's minute-by-minute, sometimes second-by-second, re-creation of the fire itself and its victims' desperate efforts to escape it. You'll find yourself feeling like you are in the building with the people you now know so well, thinking along with thme about what to do as the flames draw closer. It's an experience, given our own times, that will stay with you. Byeond his superb story-stelling skills, Von Drehle shows an expert and confident touch in putting the fire in its dynamic historical context. Here we understand how Tammany Hall leaders grasped the opportunity to reinvent themselves and their oft-disgraced political machine into a champion of the immigrant working poor. And you'll learn how New York City political legends Robert Wagner and Al Smith crafted their powerful reform agenda and how the movement fed into FDR's New Deal. Read this book and buy some copies for your friends and relatives. They will thank you.
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