David Conrad-Perez at Harvard Book Store
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA
Admission: Free
Harvard Book Store welcomes David Conrad-Pérez —historian, former journalist, and research director for the Center for Media & Social Impact at American University—for a discussion of his new book, Fire in the Heart of the City: The Triangle Shirtwaist Tragedy and the Origins of Modern Charity. About Fire in the Heart of the City How New York’s elite claimed authority over social welfare in the wake of the Triangle Shirtwaist Tragedy. In American history, few tragedies have been as consequential—and as enduringly misunderstood—as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911. Long remembered as a turning point in the struggle for labor protections, Fire in the Heart of the Cit y shows how the fire also helped transform another cornerstone of modern American life: the rise of modern charity. Set in early twentieth-century New York, the book tells the extraordinary story of what happened when a catastrophic fire in Greenwich Village threw Adolph Ochs, the ambitious new publisher of the New York Times, and Rose Schneiderman, a defiant young labor organizer, into a momentous struggle over who should organize the city’s response: a rising charity sector led by wealthy financiers and…