[gmw]

Originally Posted by bfisher

[...] There were a few howlers in this book, but on minor points peripheral to the subject. Overall, it aligns with most of what I've previously read about the explosion.

What do you mean by "howlers"?

Originally Posted by Catlady

I'm just past the first third, and I have been wondering how some of the people connect to the main event. But I'm finding them quite interesting, so it's not bothering me that I don't know how they fit into the big picture.

That's about where I'm up to too. I like having all this background. I think this book as presented it well and most of it I can see where it fits. He has, perhaps, been going overboard with following the life of Barss in the trenches, but it's still interesting to me.

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

[...] Indeed, so enraged was I by it that I then did some hunting around and came up with a book called Shattered City by Janet Kitz, which I have almost finished reading. She it was who did a vast amount of research back in the 1980s, interviewing survivors, working on trying to match the bags of belongings never claimed to people listed among the dead, and working on the display in the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax. This was opened on 6 December 1987, seventy years after the blast. [...]

This is interesting, something I will be watching for as I continue reading. I had noticed the lack of footnotes and in place reference links (as noted by CRussel), and after reading your comments I looked up the source notes in the back. This book obviously owes a great deal to Janet Kitz's work, amongst others like Ruffman and Howell, Ground Zero. Most history owes a lot to past historians, but you have to wonder how far is too far when it comes to referencing such recent research.

But I have been enjoying Bacon's writing so far. I like the very broad background he has given. There is so much more context to the events here that I cannot but (so far) compare it favourably against Kate Moore's The Radium Girls. The two books overlap in the periods covered, but in this book we're getting a look into so many different facets of life before the event that I feel much better placed to understand not only what happened, but at least some of the how and why.