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Feb. 23rd, 2019 11:59 amMy roommate has a copy of Stephen Puleo's Dark Tide, the one full-length history book about the Boston Molassacre, which I'd been meaning to read ever since last month's centenary and therefore decided to use as my Space Opera detox.
It's a solid and well-researched account of the disaster, covering the period of time from the initial construction of the giant molasses tank through the end of the court case to determine who was responsible for the tank's destruction and subsequent massive amounts of death, with detours into the munitions market during WWI, the Boston anarchist movement, the Harding presidency, and the big business boom of the early 1920s.
It also has an unfortunate tendency to do the thing, you know that history book thing, where it's like "March 15, 1916: heart-rending scene in which several people who three years later will be devastated by the molasses flood think uneasily about the new tank in their neighborhood, and also about Boston's changing socioeconomic demographics, and then have a conversation about molasses." Don't give me that, Stephen Puleo! If you want me to believe someone had a specific thought or a specific conversation on a specific date, I want a footnote and a source I can trace back; otherwise, talk in broader generalities and leave novelistic internal monologues for the novelists.
On the other hand, all the novelistic internal monologues does provide a LOT of opportunities for beautifully creepy horror-movie descriptions of molasses, which I DO approve of very much:
As Isaac straddled the pipe and gripped the flange to examine the bolts, he could almost hear the molasses shifting and wriggling in the pipe, could feel it wriggling inside, like a long thick worm inching towards its home. Behind him he heard something else, an unnatural wail that sent a chill through him that had nothing to do with the weather. He tried to shut his ears to the groan and the long roll of rumbling that came from inside the molasses tank. But it was no use...
OK, well played, Steven King, I TOO feel the unearthly horror of two million tons of molasses poised to unleash destruction on an unsuspecting city.
Puleo also gets a bit hagiographic about judge Hugh W. Ogden, who eventually decided the case in favor of the claimants and against the USIA corporation that built the bank, which: a good decision! I approve of it! I don't think we needed several approving chapters about how Ogden's experience in the war and opinions about how the country needed a good dose of military discipline etc. and how all that probably maybe influenced his decision-making, but of course YMMV.
My sympathies were however very effectively engaged with Isaac Gonzalez, general man-on-call at the tank, who historical record shows not only attempted many, many times to warn the company about issues with the tank but also stressed about it so much that he went on daily 1 AM cross-town runs just to make sure everything was OK and the tank hadn't exploded in the middle of the night.
(The incident that both I and everyone involved in the court case considered most infuriating:
ISAAC GONZALEZ: the tank is leaking! everyone can see it leak! children come steal molasses from the leaks! WE ALL KNOW IT'S BAD!
CORPORATE USIA: .... ok! ok. we have heard and listened to your concerns.
CORPORATE USIA: We will therefore paint the tank brown so it's harder for people to see it leaking.)
Anyway then I rewatched the Drunk History episode about the Molassacre and got mad about how they attributed all of Isaac Gonzalez's attempts to warn the company to a random firefighter played by Jason Ritter and didn't name Gonzalez ONCE, so I clearly learned something from this book! Despite my frustrations with the writing style, an overall solid read and resource.
It's a solid and well-researched account of the disaster, covering the period of time from the initial construction of the giant molasses tank through the end of the court case to determine who was responsible for the tank's destruction and subsequent massive amounts of death, with detours into the munitions market during WWI, the Boston anarchist movement, the Harding presidency, and the big business boom of the early 1920s.
It also has an unfortunate tendency to do the thing, you know that history book thing, where it's like "March 15, 1916: heart-rending scene in which several people who three years later will be devastated by the molasses flood think uneasily about the new tank in their neighborhood, and also about Boston's changing socioeconomic demographics, and then have a conversation about molasses." Don't give me that, Stephen Puleo! If you want me to believe someone had a specific thought or a specific conversation on a specific date, I want a footnote and a source I can trace back; otherwise, talk in broader generalities and leave novelistic internal monologues for the novelists.
On the other hand, all the novelistic internal monologues does provide a LOT of opportunities for beautifully creepy horror-movie descriptions of molasses, which I DO approve of very much:
As Isaac straddled the pipe and gripped the flange to examine the bolts, he could almost hear the molasses shifting and wriggling in the pipe, could feel it wriggling inside, like a long thick worm inching towards its home. Behind him he heard something else, an unnatural wail that sent a chill through him that had nothing to do with the weather. He tried to shut his ears to the groan and the long roll of rumbling that came from inside the molasses tank. But it was no use...
OK, well played, Steven King, I TOO feel the unearthly horror of two million tons of molasses poised to unleash destruction on an unsuspecting city.
Puleo also gets a bit hagiographic about judge Hugh W. Ogden, who eventually decided the case in favor of the claimants and against the USIA corporation that built the bank, which: a good decision! I approve of it! I don't think we needed several approving chapters about how Ogden's experience in the war and opinions about how the country needed a good dose of military discipline etc. and how all that probably maybe influenced his decision-making, but of course YMMV.
My sympathies were however very effectively engaged with Isaac Gonzalez, general man-on-call at the tank, who historical record shows not only attempted many, many times to warn the company about issues with the tank but also stressed about it so much that he went on daily 1 AM cross-town runs just to make sure everything was OK and the tank hadn't exploded in the middle of the night.
(The incident that both I and everyone involved in the court case considered most infuriating:
ISAAC GONZALEZ: the tank is leaking! everyone can see it leak! children come steal molasses from the leaks! WE ALL KNOW IT'S BAD!
CORPORATE USIA: .... ok! ok. we have heard and listened to your concerns.
CORPORATE USIA: We will therefore paint the tank brown so it's harder for people to see it leaking.)
Anyway then I rewatched the Drunk History episode about the Molassacre and got mad about how they attributed all of Isaac Gonzalez's attempts to warn the company to a random firefighter played by Jason Ritter and didn't name Gonzalez ONCE, so I clearly learned something from this book! Despite my frustrations with the writing style, an overall solid read and resource.
