Stephen Puleo

"Dark Tide is the definitive account of America’s most fascinating and surreal disaster.” —John Marr, San Francisco Bay Guardian Shortly after noon on January 15, 1919, a fifty-foot-tall steel tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses collapsed on Boston’s waterfront, disgorging its contents as a fifteen-foot-high wave of molasses that briefly traveled at thirty-five miles an hour. Dark Tide tells the compelling story of this man-made disaster that claimed the lives of twenty-one people and scores of animals and caused widespread destruction. Dark Tide has been selected as a "town-wide reading book" for five Massachusetts communities including Holliston, Mass. “Narrated with gusto . . . [Puleo’s] enthusiasm for a little-known catastrophe is infectious.” —The New Yorker “Compelling . . . Puleo has done justice to a gripping historical story.” —Ralph Ranalli, Boston Globe “Thoroughly researched, the volume weaves together the stories of the people and families affected by the disaster . . . The cleanup lasted months, the lawsuits years, the fearful memories a lifetime.” —Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press “Giving a human face to tragedy is part of the brilliance of Stephen Puleo’s Dark Tide . . . Until they were given voice in this book, the characters who drove the story were forgotten.” —Caroline Leavitt, Boston Sunday Globe

The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919

Dark Tide

Once upon a time, "Boston Town" was an insulated New England township. But the community was destined for greatness. Between 1850 and 1900, Boston underwent a stunning metamorphosis to emerge as one of the world's great metropolises-one that achieved national and international prominence in politics, medicine, education, science, social activism, literature, commerce, and transportation. Long before the frustrations of our modern era, in which the notion of accomplishing great things often appears overwhelming or even impossible, Boston distinguished itself in the last half of the nineteenth century by proving it could tackle and overcome the most arduous of challenges and obstacles with repeated-and often resounding-success, becoming a city of vision and daring. In A City So Grand, Stephen Puleo chronicles this remarkable period in Boston's history, in his trademark page-turning style. Our journey begins with the ferocity of the abolitionist movement of the 1850s and ends with the glorious opening of America's first subway station, in 1897. In between we witness the thirty-five-year engineering and city-planning feat of the Back Bay project, Boston's explosion in size through immigration and annexation, the devastating Great Fire of 1872 and subsequent rebuilding of downtown, and Alexander Graham Bell's first telephone utterance in 1876 from his lab at Exeter Place. These lively stories and many more paint an extraordinary portrait of a half century of progress, leadership, and influence that turned a New England town into a world-class city, giving us the Boston we know today. From the Hardcover edition.

The Rise of an American Metropolis: Boston 1850-1900

A City So Grand

Charles Sumner and the Fight for a More Perfect Union

Great Abolitionist

Early in the afternoon of May 22, 1856, ardent pro-slavery Congressman Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina strode into the United States Senate Chamber in Washington D.C. and began beating renowned anti-slavery Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a gutta-percha walking cane. Brooks struck again and again—more than thirty times across Sumner's head, face, and shoulders—until his cane splintered into pieces and the helpless Massachusetts senator lay unconscious, covered in blood, and having nearly wrenched his desk from its fixed base. It was a retaliatory attack. Forty-eight hours earlier, Sumner had concluded a speech on the Senate floor that had spanned two days, during which he vilified Southern slave-owners for violence occurring in Kansas, called Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois a "noise-some, squat, and nameless animal," and famously charged Brooks's second cousin, South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, as having "a mistress... who ugly to others, is always lovely to him....I mean, the harlot, Slavery." Brooks not only shattered his cane during the beating, but also destroyed any pretense of civility between North and South—a line had been crossed and there was no going back. One of the most shocking and provocative events in American history, the caning convinced each side that the gulf between them was unbridgeable and that they could no longer discuss their vast differences of opinion on slavery on any reasonable level.The Caning: The Assault That Drove America to Civil War tells the incredible story of this transformative event. While Sumner eventually recovered after a lengthy convalescence, compromise had suffered a mortal blow. Moderate voices were drowned out completely; extremist views accelerated, became intractable, and locked both sides on a tragic collision course. The caning had an enormous pact on the events that followed over the next four years: the increasing militancy of abolitionists; the meteoric rise of the Republican Party and American History/Civil War Abraham Lincoln; the Dred Scott decision; John Brown's actions; the secession of the Southern states; and the founding of the Confederacy. As result of the caning, the country was pushed, inexorably and unstoppably, to civil war. Like turbulent, swift-flowing water through a narrow channel, America had nothing to slow it down and nowhere else to go. Many factors conspired to cause the Civil War, but it was the caning that Puleo, made war unavoidable five years later.

The Assault That Drove America to Civil War

The Caning

In this lively and engaging history, Stephen Puleo tells the story of the Boston Italians from their earliest years, when a largely illiterate and impoverished people in a strange land recreated the bonds of village and region in the cramped quarters of the North End. Focusing on this first and crucial Italian enclave in Boston, Puleo describes the experience of Italian immigrants as they battled poverty, illiteracy, and prejudice; explains their transformation into Italian Americans during the Depression and World War II; and chronicles their rich history in Boston up to the present day.

A Story of Pride, Perseverance, and Paesani, from the Years of the Great Immigration to the Present Day

The Boston Italians

“[A] well-researched and splendidly written chronicle of the Jamestown, its captain, and an Irish priest who ministered to the starving in Cork city...Puleo’s tale, despite the hardship to come, surely is a tribute to the better angels of America’s nature, and in that sense, it couldn’t be more timely.” —The Wall Street Journal

The USS Jamestown, the Irish Famine, and the Remarkable Story of America's First Humanitarian Mission

Voyage of Mercy

“Puleo has found a new way to tell the story with this well-researched and splendidly written chronicle of the Jamestown, its captain, and an Irish priest who ministered to the starving in Cork city...Puleo’s tale, despite the hardship to come, surely is a tribute to the better angels of America’s nature, and in that sense, it couldn’t be more timely.” —The Wall Street Journal The remarkable story of the mission that inspired a nation to donate massive relief to Ireland during the potato famine and began America's tradition of providing humanitarian aid around the world More than 5,000 ships left Ireland during the great potato famine in the late 1840s, transporting the starving and the destitute away from their stricken homeland. The first vessel to sail in the other direction, to help the millions unable to escape, was the USS Jamestown, a converted warship, which left Boston in March 1847 loaded with precious food for Ireland. In an unprecedented move by Congress, the warship had been placed in civilian hands, stripped of its guns, and committed to the peaceful delivery of food, clothing, and supplies in a mission that would launch America’s first full-blown humanitarian relief effort. Captain Robert Bennet Forbes and the crew of the USS Jamestown embarked on a voyage that began a massive eighteen-month demonstration of soaring goodwill against the backdrop of unfathomable despair—one nation’s struggle to survive, and another’s effort to provide a lifeline. The Jamestown mission captured hearts and minds on both sides of the Atlantic, of the wealthy and the hardscrabble poor, of poets and politicians. Forbes’ undertaking inspired a nationwide outpouring of relief that was unprecedented in size and scope, the first instance of an entire nation extending a hand to a foreign neighbor for purely humanitarian reasons. It showed the world that national generosity and brotherhood were not signs of weakness, but displays of quiet strength and moral certitude. In Voyage of Mercy, Stephen Puleo tells the incredible story of the famine, the Jamestown voyage, and the commitment of thousands of ordinary Americans to offer relief to Ireland, a groundswell that provided the collaborative blueprint for future relief efforts, and established the United States as the leader in international aid. The USS Jamestown’s heroic voyage showed how the ramifications of a single decision can be measured not in days, but in decades.

Stephen Puleo

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