Modern Jewish History - Book Group

mhc48
Tue, 26 Apr 2011 15:21:08 +0000

Finished today. I admit that my interest flagged a bit during the ceaseless recounting of deaths, even though it was probably necessary to do it to recapture the horror people felt at the time. Unfortunately today we are innured to deaths of larger numbers of people than would have shocked people of that time. How often do we hear about and then ignore stories of ferries in the Far East capsizing with deaths of hundreds.

It was mentioned in passing in the book, but if you haven’t heard about it before, you might want to at least Google the fire and sinking of the General Slocum in the Hudson River in June of 1904. There 1021 people died but few today know about it. The Triangle Waist Fire led to reforms and affected men who became famous later. The Slocum didn’t have that effect and memory of it faded away.

Actually I found this book interesting in the background it gave to an era which I know little about in general, even though men like Al Smith, Robert Wagner, Charles Whitman etc are well known to me as a New Yorker. I didn’ know much about their early careers. As law student one of the first non textbooks I recall reading was about Max Steur and it was interesting to read of his trial exploits and techniques again…