book time

[lirazel]

Apparently for the first time in my life I'm interested in reading non-fiction. I've always been more a novel-type person and haven't really been drawn to reading a lot of full-length books in the non-fiction genre. But I guess because I'm not in school anymore, I've been wanting to lately.

So I was wondering if any of you have any recs for me, non-fiction books that you really love and/or think I'd enjoy.

I'm not really into memoirs as a genre and no self-help type-things, but I love anything involving history or culture, especially works that explore specific or obsucre moments in history or cultural movements. As a general rule, I also prefer works that don't have a lot to do with contemporary American life. I mean, I live that life; I like to learn about lives that are really different than mine. I'm less interested in biographies of specific people than I am in works about larger groups, events, etc., but if you have an especially awesome one in mind, feel free to let me know.

Anyone?

Comments

[mollivanders.livejournal.com]

Oh god, that is heartbreaking.

[evewithanapple.livejournal.com]

It's just one of the sections from the book that made me cry. There's another about how the bodies were identified, and one woman ran out and tried to throw herself in the Hudson River after she found her daughter. Another girl found her fiancee's body, still wearing a locket with her picture in it. They had been planning their wedding.

And the owners didn't even get any jail time. They were found not responsible for any of the deaths, even though they had left a potential escape route locked to prevent workers from leaving before the end of the work day. There's another bit I transcribed (sorry for spamming your comments, Lauren):

The Triangle owners did not dare leave through the angry throng- and so, for the first time in the history of the courthouse, two acquitted men departed via the prisoners' pen. Harris and Blanck were smuggled through the Tombs to a little-used exit. At about five P.M., the Shirtwaist Kings stepped into a nearly deserted street in the cold December twilight.

Their limousine was waiting around a corner, at the main courthouse entrance. They could hear the shouting of the furious crowd awaiting them, so the partners started walking towards the nearest subway station.

A young man caught sight of them and charged up the street. "Murderers!" he cried as he drew near. "Murderers! Not guilty? Not guilty? Where is the justice?"

He got right up to them. "We will get you yet!" he gasped. And then he collapsed onto the cobbles. As a policeman began blowing his whistle for an ambulance, Harris and Blanck ducked into the subway.

The next day's papers reported that the young man was at a local hospital "suffering from a disordered mind." His name was David Weiner, and his sister Rose had burned to death at the Triangle Waist Company, a hundred feet above the ground, behind a locked door.

just the number of families and young lives this destroyed- it's mindboggling. And no one was ever held accountable.

[mollivanders.livejournal.com]

Does the book go in to the trial? I'm curious how, when they broke clear laws, they were found not guilty - not even a mistrial, but not guilty.

[evewithanapple.livejournal.com]

It does! Basically the defence argued that the door wasn't locked, and since the eyewitness testimony was from women who had been working in the factory, their observations were dismissed with "well it was smoky and everyone was panicking, they must have been mistaken." And the primary witness for the prosecution, Kate Alterman, was torn apart on the stand by the defence attorney, who claimed that she had been coached to say that the door was locked. Basically it was a case of a good defence attorney and a sympathetic judge, who instructed the jury that they could only convict if the factory owners had known that the door was locked. So: the door wasn't locked, but if it WAS locked, the owners didn't know about it. (The judge in the case had lost his job as a tenement inspector over a fire five years earlier, so he wasn't exactly neutral.)