DAVID CONRAD-PÉREZ
david conrad-pÉrez
Historian and Nonfiction author
PRAISE FOR FIRE IN THE HEART OF THE CITY
"Fire in the Heart of the City tells the story of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire not as the familiar narrative of labor reform but a more sordid history of how a small group of wealthy New York charity bosses exploited the tragedy to professionalize philanthropy, sideline workers' movements, and ultimately mainstream a nativist, eugenicist vision of social welfare. David Conrad-Pérez is a riveting storyteller who manages to completely recast what we thought we knew of this tragedy. It is an essential, unsettling history."
greg grandin,
Pulitzer Prize winning historian and author of The End of the Myth
and The Empire of Necessity
"Wow. Just wow... Conrad-Perez has produced one of the most engrossing non-fiction books I’ve read in years."
Stacy Horn,
award-winning author of Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York
"Massively researched and beautifully written, this book tells an important story from a provocative new perspective. David Conrad-Perez knows Gilded Age New York as if he were an eyewitness and he uses this intimacy to reveal the inner workings of power. The shocking tragedy of the 1911 Triangle fire continues to be a key to understanding today's world."
David von drehle,
New york times bestselling author of Triangle: The Fire That Changed America
"From the ruins of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, David Conrad-Pérez recovers a riveting story of brutality, charity, and the struggle for justice amid the fierce inequalities of America’s industrial age. Fire in the Heart of the City is a revelatory history, meticulously researched and powerfully told."
kevin boyle,
National Book Award–winning author of Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
"Other historians have written about the Triangle fire, immigrant women’s labor unrest, New York’s ‘newspaper wars,’ and the rise of Gilded Age fortunes. But no one that I know of has woven those threads together the way Conrad-Pérez has."
Annelise Orleck,
professor of history and author of Common Sense and a Little Fire
“David Conrad-Pérez’s study of the press, the powerful, and the battle for workers’ rights is at once enlightening and infuriating. Fire in the Heart of the City offers an urgent lesson in how cruelty can masquerade as benevolence and journalism can protect authority rather than question it. Deeply researched and profoundly empathetic, this is an essential work of media and social history.”
Josh levin,
national editor at Slate and author of The Queen
"Fire in the Heart of the City tells the story of an awful and quite preventable tragedy that galvanized the labor movement and led The New York Times to respond with an appeal for charity instead of justice. David Conrad-Perez is an engaging writer who brings this intense and infuriating history to life, while offering a striking reinterpretation of the Triangle fire and its lasting consequences."
Michael Kazin,
professor of history, Georgetown University and author of What It Took
to Win: A History of the Democratic Party
“The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire profoundly shaped labor reform in the United States. In Fire in the Heart of the City, David Conrad-Perez offers a fresh perspective on the tragedy, identifying it as a key moment in the emergence of modern professional charity. In this absorbing and thoroughly researched account, familiar labor leaders are joined by financier Jacob Schiff, New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs, and the city’s leading charities. Conrad-Perez shows how public outrage was redirected toward ‘expert’-led charities, reshaping social policy on poverty, crime, and immigration in ways that endure today. Fire in the Heart of the City is a great read that broadens and deepens our understanding of this tragic event and its enduring legacy. An important and compelling addition to the Triangle fire literature.”
Mary Anne Trasciatti,
president of the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, labor historian and author of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: The Rebel Girl, Democracy, and Revolution
"This absorbing historical analysis of the confluence of labor, elite media, and social reform movements, and not the least, the workers themselves, is a must read for all engaged in the efforts to understand how the present came to be."
Yoosun park,
professor of social work and author of Facilitating Injustice
“David Conrad-Pérez is a great storyteller. In Fire in the Heart of the City, he pulls together into one grand narrative the histories of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, the women garment workers who fought for union representation, Adolph Ochs' New York Times and its fealty to the rich and powerful, and the "scientific charity" organizations' crusade to deflect attention from the underlying causes of workplace accidents by blaming the immigrant victims. An important read...for anyone who wants to know more about the ways in which the past has shaped our present.”
David nasaw,
author of Andrew Carnegie
"In this fascinating new book, David Conrad-Perez offers penetrating insights into the Progressive era, a remarkable period of American history. It's an unusual work of riveting non-fiction prose, crammed with colorful vignettes about the powerful personalities who played roles in those pivotal events. But this book is not just a reflection on the past. It is also a preview of today's world, illustrating how major financiers ... have conspired through the decades to advance corporate interests and impoverish America's working poor."
KirstIn Downey,
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and bestselling author of
The Woman Behind the New Deal
"No newspaper has more books written about it than The New York Times. But none of them comes close to doing what Fire in the Heart of the City does. David Conrad-Perez has written a vivid, human account of the newspaper’s impact on charity, not only in what it donated itself but also in how it shaped the legal and social culture that has allowed American philanthropy to benefit so many. It’s a complex story, told brilliantly and poignantly."
john maxwell hamilton,
journalism historian and author of Journalism’s Roving Eye and Manipulating the Masses
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FIRE IN THE HEART OF THE CITY
A compelling and original narrative history of New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, exposing how New York’s elite transformed the tragedy into the foundation of modern American charity.
Fire in the Heart of the City details the riveting story of what happened when a tragic fire in Greenwich Village threw Adolph Ochs, the ambitious new publisher of the New York Times, and Rose Schneiderman, a defiant young labor organizer, against each other in a momentous conflict. Following the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire—the worst disaster New York City had ever experienced—a significant feud emerged between New York’s wealthy elite and labor rights’ activists over who should organize the city's response: a nascent charity sector led by the city's wealthiest bankers or the reform-focused unions of Lower Manhattan. What happened next reshaped not only the city of New York, it gave rise to one of the most powerful institutions in American history and changed the character of a nation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Conrad-Pérez is a media historian and narrative nonfiction writer. He is the author of Fire in the Heart of the City: The Triangle Shirtwaist Tragedy and the Origins of Modern Charity, a revelatory story of how a single New York catastrophe reshaped American ideas about labor, journalism, and civic responsibility.